Ethical Considerations

In the ethical considerations category, assignments are split between two primary foci—the first engages students in the institutional ethics of using LLMs in undergraduate classrooms and the second attends to the ethical implications of LLMs and their outputs.

Speaking and Thinking for Ourselves

Jeremy Proulx
Eastern Michigan University

This assignment uses the short essay by Immanual Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” to frame a discussion of the ethics of generative AI. In the essay, Kant defines Enlightenment as the emergence from a kind of self-imposed inability to speak for ourselves. Kant argues that pursuing the values of Enlightenment involves participating in public discourse, what Kant calls the public use of reason. These themes are explicitly couched in the context of using generative AI to help with completing assignments. What does the appropriate use of Generative AI look like? How can we utilize these powerful tools and not abdicate our moral responsibility to participate in public discourse in a meaningful and productive way? How can we use Generative AI as a writing tool and still speak for ourselves?