What A.I. Means for College Writing

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The arrival of tools like ChatGPT has changed how college students write. Some use A.I. to organize ideas or fine-tune phrasing; others rely on it to complete entire assignments. Professors are adapting in turn, trading take-home essays for blue books, experimenting with oral exams or rethinking their pedagogy to include A.I. from the start. We talk with New Yorker staff writer and Bard College literature professor Hua Hsu about how artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education and what a new generation of students might be losing, and learning, as a result. Guests: Hua Hsu, staff writer, The New Yorker; professor of literature, Bard College Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from the Exploratorium. Leap into the wild new world of artificial intelligence this summer at the all-new All-Ages exhibition, Adventures in AI. Now through September 14th at Pier 15. Tickets at Exploratorium.edu slash AI.
0:20.1	Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Jose Museum of Art.
0:24.4	Photographer Paw Ho-Hare explores homeland and family among her Hmong American Community.
0:30.7	See the imaginative landscape.
0:33.0	Learn more at SJM-U-S-A-R-T.org.
0:37.8	From K-Q-E-D.
0:59.9	From K-Q-E-D in San Francisco, I'm Leslie McClurg, in today from Mina Kim.
1:07.9	Coming up on forum, many college students are no longer writing their own emails, their own essays, or even their own applications.
1:12.3	Artificial intelligence tools like chat GPT are doing it for them.
1:17.6	Some use AI to brainstorm, maybe edit. Others let it do all the heavy lifting. We'll talk to writer and professor Huashu about how AI is reshaping higher education. His recent New Yorker
1:23.5	piece is called What Happens After AI Destroyed College Writing?
1:29.1	That's next after this news.
1:46.0	This is Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim. And I'll be honest, writing college essays was very grueling for me. I mean, I would stay up hours tortured by assignments.
1:51.6	And I can honestly see why more and more students are turning to artificial intelligence for help.
1:58.3	Simultaneously, it really pains me to think that my little girl, who is six,
2:02.5	may not be forced to learn how to write or to really grapple with the creative process.
2:08.0	With more and more students using platforms like ChatGPT, campuses are having to grapple with
2:13.9	not only a question of what is plagiarism, but also with the point of education
2:19.7	itself. Professor and writer Washu's recent piece for The New Yorker is called What Happens
2:25.9	After AI destroys college writing. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, Stay True in 2023.
2:32.7	Welcome.
2:35.7	Why, are you there? Oh, yeah, it's great to be True in 2023. Welcome. While are you there?
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 26 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KQED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KQED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.