Photo by Joanne Beck
With all of the availability of artificial intelligence — AI for short — and the myriad apps available to help with research, to answer questions, and figure out how to do most anything, comes a new dilemma for educators wanting to ensure their students aren’t misusing the technology, State University of New York Chancellor John King says.
“We actually just added artificial intelligence to our general education requirements around information literacy, because we think our students will need to understand how AI works, how to use it ethically,” King said during a recent visit to Batavia. “And so we’re now building that into the general education requirements for all undergraduates across SUNY, and we’re doing a lot of professional development with faculty thinking about both, how do you teach students about using AI, but also, how do we think about the role that AI plays in the classroom?”
That might change how teachers dole out homework, he said, moving them from at-home assignments to asking students to complete them during class time.
“Because you want to make sure that students are engaging with the material themselves and not just relying on AI. You know, some of the work is actually helping students understand how best to use AI, you know, the prompt development, for example, the kind of question you ask matters a lot with what you'll get back from AI, and so helping students think about, how do you design the right question?” he said. “Also helping students be skeptical readers of what they find, whether it's on the internet or from AI, they have to ask, is this right? How do I know? Let me go check these sources.”
There are so many interesting things that college faculty members are working on with AI, he said, including simulated conversations in foreign languages.
“It’s such an incredible tool if used well,” he said.
The State University of New York — of which Genesee Community and Empire State colleges are included — will require undergraduate students to take courses in AI and civic discourse as part of their general education curriculum beginning in fall 2026.
The courses will be part of the university’s effort to prepare students to engage with emerging technologies and evaluate information, as King said, ethically.
According to SUNY's website, students will be learning how to use AI tools to locate information, evaluate that information from different sources, understand the ethical implications of using AI, how to weigh information for bias, truthfulness and other factors and how to navigate and assess the impact of AI in society.
