I should say off the bat, that I am ‘pro AI’, whatever that means. I use both Claude (my favourite as it is a terrible flatterer) and ChatGPT, although not yet enough to get a subscription to either. This underuse is due to the work that I do, as well as the limitations of my own imagination in respect of how to fully use AI to augment and enhance my life. Fundamentally, I think we all need to get adept at integrating AI into our lives because we are on a precipice, and those who do not understand how to incorporate AI will get left behind. What follows are some thoughts on how AI is currently impacting certain aspects of higher education in the UK, and how it could fundamentally transform HE altogether. Namely, coursework assessment at present, and the structure and function of education in the future. Students’ use of
Lived experience and academic knowledge are not the same thing; in fact, you could comfortably posit them as diametrically opposed. This is not to say that lived experience does not belong in the academy, but simply to make a distinction between the two forms of knowledge. I do not see them as competing, and in the best of worlds, I think they are mutually supportive, but they are not the same thing. This may seem obvious to some, but there has been a rising trend for some time now to uncritically incorporate lived experience into the academy in ways I think are problematic. I do not want to create a hierarchy here and in fact, I think it is the tacit or unconscious acceptance of a hierarchy which has created the problem in the first place. So, when I make the distinctions I am making, think of them as domains separated