Illustration: The Atlantic

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to the board of New College of Florida earlier this year, giving the oversight panel of the public liberal-arts college in Sarasota a decidedly right-wing bent, there was no ambiguity in the message being sent.

This year has quickly become a defining moment for American higher education, one that will decide whom institutions admit, who will teach those students, and what those professors can teach.

Miles Community College is a small, rural institution located about a mile off Interstate 94 in eastern Montana. It’s the only college in a 70-mile radius, enrolling around 500 students each term. Around 43 percent of these individuals are dual-enrollment high schoolers.

Most high school students in this rural community don’t think they need college because they plan to follow in their families' footsteps and work on the ranch after they graduate. MCC is showing they another pathway.

The rise of AI software brings with it the prospect of making our lives easier. But could it also be unethical? Is it plagiarism? And could it chip away at our own creativity? 

That's what North Carolina State University English professor Paul Fyfe wanted to find out. So, at the end of a recent semester, he told his students to cheat by using the text-generating AI software ChatGPT to help write their final essays. In this interview, Fyfe discusses what AI can and can't do.