Warner draws hard line against AI feedback in writing class

"I have no use for feedback from generative AI models because they do not read, think or feel," writes John Warner in his latest Inside Higher Ed "Just Visiting" column. That is the sharpened version of a longer argument: the fights over AI in college writing classrooms are not really about policy or pedagogy. They are about values.

Warner catalogs his. Writing as thinking. Writing to real audiences rather than rubrics. Process over product. Choice-making as the thing being taught. "We don't write to rubrics, we write to audiences," he writes. Where AI blocks the student from "the struggle of that choice-making," he argues, it hinders their development as writers. He wants the exchange in a writing class to stay human. "Writing is an embodied experience," he writes, "and when it comes to learning to write, I want students to have the deepest, most embodied experiences."

The clearest tell for him comes from the students themselves. After Princeton offered free ChatGPT subscriptions to its students, Warner notes, undergraduates published their reply: "Please don't do this; we want to learn!" Two of the AI researchers on our Who's Who watchlist shared the column within hours, a sign the debate still has traction inside the field it challenges.