AI will not wait for faculty meetings

By Noel Galon de Leon

Last week, I read Jose “Butch” Dalisay Jr.’s column, “Qwertyman No. 210: A Grand Experiment with AI,” and I believe it is one of the most important pieces on education and artificial intelligence published in the Philippines this year. What struck me was not the novelty of allowing AI into the classroom, but the intellectual honesty behind his decision. At a time when many educators are reacting to artificial intelligence with either fear or blind enthusiasm, Dalisay chose a more thoughtful path. He acknowledged that AI is here to stay and asked a question that many schools have been avoiding: How should teachers respond to a technology that is already transforming the way students write, think, research, and learn? It is a question that deserves to be discussed not only in creative writing classrooms but across every discipline in higher education.

Dalisay’s proposal is remarkably simple but deeply significant. Rather than banning AI from his Creative Writing course at the University of the Philippines Diliman, he plans to integrate it into classroom activities. His students will first write their own pieces under supervised conditions, establishing a baseline of their own abilities. They will then ask AI to produce its own version of the same assignment. The comparison is not intended to determine whether AI writes better than humans. Instead, it invites students to examine how AI organizes ideas, develops arguments, and constructs language while reflecting on what remains uniquely human in their own writing. This transforms AI from a shortcut into a learning tool, encouraging critical analysis rather than passive dependence.

For me, the most important lesson in Dalisay’s experiment is not about technology. It is about education. He reminds us that the role of a teacher is not merely to prevent students from accessing new tools but to help them understand those tools, question them, and use them responsibly. Banning AI may temporarily reduce its use inside the classroom, but it does not prepare students for the world they will enter after graduation. Outside the university, AI is already being used in publishing, journalism, marketing, law, education, business, research, and countless other professions. If students are expected to work in environments where AI has become part of everyday practice, then schools have an obligation to teach them how to engage with it ethically and intelligently rather than pretending it does not exist.

Unfortunately, many educational institutions continue to move at a frustratingly slow pace. Universities are understandably careful when introducing new policies because academic governance requires extensive consultation, committee deliberations, legal review, and administrative approval. However, artificial intelligence is evolving much faster than institutional bureaucracy. By the time a comprehensive university-wide AI policy is finalized, new models, new capabilities, and new ethical questions may already have emerged. Education cannot afford to respond to technological change years after the fact. If universities continue to wait for perfect policies before taking action, they risk allowing confusion, inconsistency, and misuse to become the norm inside their classrooms.

This is why I believe the responsibility cannot rest solely on university administrators. Faculty members themselves should begin developing practical and transparent AI guidelines within their own subjects, even before institution-wide policies are completed. These guidelines do not have to be rigid or overly complicated. They simply need to establish clear expectations for students regarding when AI may be used, how its use should be disclosed, and which aspects of an assignment must remain entirely the student’s own work. Every discipline has different objectives, and every classroom has different learning outcomes. Waiting for a universal policy that attempts to cover every possible scenario may delay the conversations that need to happen today.

Creative writing presents perhaps one of the most fascinating challenges in this discussion. Unlike subjects that prioritize factual accuracy or technical precision, creative writing asks students to discover their own voice, explore their imagination, and transform personal experiences into literature. A poem is not simply a sequence of grammatically correct sentences. A short story is not successful merely because it follows proper structure. Literature has always been valued because it reflects the complexity of human emotions, memory, culture, relationships, and lived experience. These are qualities that artificial intelligence can imitate through patterns in language but cannot genuinely possess. The distinction between authentic experience and algorithmic imitation should become one of the central conversations in every creative writing classroom.

The arrival of AI also forces educators to reconsider what they are actually assessing. For many years, writing instruction often rewarded polished grammar, organized paragraphs, correct citation, and technically sound composition. These remain important skills, but they are no longer sufficient as the primary indicators of learning. Artificial intelligence can already produce essays with impressive grammar, coherent organization, and convincing transitions within seconds. If educators continue to evaluate only the mechanical quality of writing, they may unintentionally encourage students to rely more heavily on AI instead of developing their own critical thinking. The future of writing instruction should therefore place greater emphasis on originality, intellectual curiosity, personal insight, ethical judgment, and the ability to construct arguments that emerge from genuine reflection rather than automated generation.

 

This is why classroom policies should move beyond simplistic statements declaring that “AI is prohibited.” Such policies are increasingly difficult to enforce and, more importantly, they fail to educate students about responsible decision-making. Instead, teachers should begin asking more meaningful questions. Can students use AI to brainstorm ideas? May they use it to organize outlines? Is grammar correction acceptable while content generation is not? Should students be required to disclose every AI prompt they use? Should instructors evaluate both the original draft and the AI-assisted revision? These questions are more productive than blanket prohibitions because they encourage transparency and accountability rather than secrecy.

The objective should never be to produce graduates who have never used artificial intelligence. Such an expectation is unrealistic in today’s world. Instead, universities should aspire to produce graduates who understand the strengths and limitations of AI, who know when its use is appropriate, who recognize when it crosses ethical boundaries, and who possess the confidence to rely on their own judgment even when technology offers an easier alternative. AI literacy should become part of academic literacy, but it must always be accompanied by integrity, responsibility, and critical thinking. Without these values, technological competence becomes little more than technical efficiency.

This conversation extends far beyond artificial intelligence. It is about the future of education itself. The real issue is not whether AI will continue to improve because it undoubtedly will. The more pressing question is whether educators will evolve just as quickly in the way they teach, assess, and mentor students. Every technological revolution has forced schools to rethink their methods, from calculators to the internet to smartphones. Artificial intelligence is simply the latest and perhaps the most disruptive development in that history. The institutions that thrive will not necessarily be those with the strictest prohibitions but those that demonstrate the courage to experiment, evaluate, revise, and continually improve their teaching practices.

Jose “Butch” Dalisay Jr.’s classroom experiment should therefore be seen not merely as a teaching strategy but as an invitation to the entire academic community. Instead of waiting indefinitely for universities to release comprehensive AI policies, educators should begin drafting thoughtful, discipline-specific guidelines that reflect the realities of their own classrooms. These guidelines will undoubtedly evolve as technology changes, but beginning the conversation is far more valuable than remaining silent. The future of writing education will not be determined by artificial intelligence alone. It will ultimately be shaped by teachers who are willing to lead with wisdom, openness, and the conviction that education must always stay one step ahead of the technologies it seeks to understand.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the Secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.