My teaching pledge: no GenAI
My teaching pledge: no GenAI
In support of my students, to be transparent about my work, and to help colleagues who would also like to avoid the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in the classroom, I am writing and signing this No-AI pledge in my teaching.
If you're a student and you appreciate this pledge, please let me know.
If you're an educator thinking of writing a No GenAI pledge of your own I'd love to hear from you!
You can read my reasons below, or scroll down to see the pledge.
Why I am writing a No GenAI pledge
In 1994, the educator bell hooks wrote that "the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy". The classroom is the place where challenging conversations happen and where students can imagine the radical changes we need to build a new world of environmental justice, peace, care and radical resistance to inequality.
It is also the place where students feel an increasing pressure not to think for themselves but to outsource thinking to LLM chatbots.
I have watched as students have come into class more and more exhausted by the suspicion that fellow students (and even educators!) are relying on AI word generators rather than really participating in class. I've seen students become anxious, confused and distrustful about the weird new reality where AI use is both celebrated as a new form of digital literacy and punished as cheating, and where it's rare to really know whether people are using it or not.
GenAI is a threat to student learning and wellbeing, the environmental impacts of GenAI are so horrifying that experts have called for "reducing the use of AI and avoiding AI" to be the norm, and I think the AI companies are lying when they say GenAI is smart, world-changing or producing good results. I am alarmed by how often corporations are forcing us to use GenAI without our consent or even our knowledge.
It's shit, and no-one asked for it. The tide of AI slop that I see around me is genuinely, deeply terrible and I am so done with it. Unless I say it clearly, I think students might assume that I'm using GenAI in teaching because of the hype surrounding it, or because they're also exhausted and assume the worst. Therefore, I'm making this pledge to be clear with students. I don't use GenAI in teaching.
My pledge to you
I will never use GenAI to design or deliver any of my teaching or curricula.
I will never use GenAI to to mark or provide feedback on student work.
I will never promote or support corporate-institutional partnerships with unethical AI companies and products such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Grok or Llama.
I pledge to defend the classroom as a space for student learning and collaboration, and I will never use teaching to spread AI hype or to share the sales pitch of AI companies unless there is clear and specific evidence to explain why AI tools offer a benefit to students that outweighs the significant personal, emotional, educational and environmental costs.
I will never train my students to use GenAI tools to replace their own intellectual effort, creativity and learning.
I will continue to nurture opportunities for students to collaborate with each other, and I will never force them to collaborate with AI bots instead.
I will not rewrite my curricula to insert GenAI into it for the sake of doing so, nor to make my teaching seem up to date.
I will avoid the encroachment of new GenAI tools on my work.
I will never use, in my teaching, the GenAI synopsis at the top of a web search.
I will support solidarity among colleagues in resisting the use of GenAI.
I will honour students' right to resist and refuse GenAI.
To support my students I am making this pledge so that in my classes and assignments, they will know these things for sure. This pledge is an adaptation of a public No-AI pledge by educators. I am also grateful for the work and spirit of solidarity among the Alliance for Refusing Generative AI. I will update this pledge when I think of things to add, and I'll change the date when I do.
Signed,
Dr Benjamin Bowman
14th September, 2026
I know it's becoming kind of impossible to avoid AI when using the internet, computers or doing any kind of writing. I know there's a lot of pressure to adopt AI, whether we want to or not. I know a lot of students feel ashamed about using AI.
Please don't feel ashamed to use GenAI in my classes. I am not writing this pledge to make anyone feel ashamed, or to judge what students do. I am writing this pledge to support students, to be honest and truthful, and to be clear about what I do when I'm teaching. I want to help.
I do think that students are often being tricked into using AI and finding themselves, later on, dependent on it. As Todd Batistelli writes:
"A scaffold is temporary. Once a building is finished, the scaffold is removed. Load-bearing walls are integral to the structure of the building, remaining with it always. Scaffolds in learning are removed once learners achieve independent practice. Generative AI, however, can be used to replace the load-bearing walls of cognition"
I feel like a lot of my students have found that once they have started using GenAI, it's really hard to stop, even if they want to. If you find yourself in that kind of position, I'd be glad to share suggestions to help you. Just let me know.
In your support,
Ben