Michael Horn says he'd use AI to hit newsroom deadlines as a first-year at Yale, but not to skip reading or core learning. He argues for a middle ground: AI as a crutch for tight spots, not a replacement for the work that actually teaches you something.
Okay, Michael, you're starting your first year again at Yale. How would you be using AI? Where's your ethical line for students using AI? Should it be all or nothing? I'm, like, sweating having you ask.
Me the question, Jeff. I wasn't a student that used Cliff Notes a lot, so I'd love to think that I wouldn't use it regularly. But I think the reality, right, is given how present it is, you know, I mean, Google wasn't around right when I started college, so you didn't have these tools. But now, given how present AI is, and given how frankly immersed I was in the Yale Daily News, and that's really where I was majoring, I'd have to believe that if I'm being super honest, I probably would have used it to get me out of some jams, right? At certain times, right? Certainly as an editor, for the things that I was writing, I don't think I would have used it to maybe instead of reading, if that makes sense. But I have to believe I would have used it a lot of times when I was scrambling to get something in. The deadlines at the paper or getting out another daily were more important in my life at the moment. Whether they should have been or not, we can debate. And I'm pretty sure I would have used it as the. That crutch.
So definitely not all or nothing, but something in the middle. I think that's right.
