OpenAI's Education Push: 500,000 Students Get ChatGPT Access at Cal State

To their credit, OpenAI has published a guide for teachers that acknowledges ChatGPT's limitations and the problems with AI detection tools. They're at least being somewhat honest about the fact that this technology hallucinates, gets things wrong, and can amplify existing biases.

The Part That Worries Me

I called my old colleague Frank at a community college in Michigan last week (he teaches mechatronics). His take was blunt: half his students already use ChatGPT for assignments, and he can't tell who actually understands the material anymore.

The thing about learning robotics, or really any technical field, is that the struggle is the point. When I was debugging my first FANUC controller, I spent three days chasing a timing issue that turned out to be a grounding problem. Miserable experience. But I never made that mistake again, and more importantly, I developed an intuition for where to look when things go wrong.

What happens when a generation of engineers learns to ask an AI first? I genuinely don't know. It's too early to say whether this produces better problem-solvers or worse ones. The data doesn't exist yet.

Where I Land, Sort Of

I'll be honest, I'm not sure OpenAI is wrong here. The workforce is changing. The students graduating in 2026 will work alongside AI tools whether we like it or not. Maybe learning to use them effectively is, actually, a core skill now.

But there's something in OpenAI's approach to data document that gave me pause. They talk about AI changing "how we live, work and learn" like it's settled fact. It's not. We're running an experiment on an entire generation's education, and the results won't be clear for a decade.

When I trained new hires at Kuka, I could see who understood the fundamentals and who was just following procedures. The ones who understood could adapt when something unexpected happened. The procedure-followers couldn't.

I worry we're building a generation of procedure-followers. But I also worried about PLCs replacing relay logic back in the day, and that turned out fine.

Maybe I'm just old.

Sarah Williams · 49 mins ago · 4 min