by Marcus Howley ’28 on September 17, 2026
Opinion
This past summer, I had an opportunity to attend an AI Colloquium hosted by Providence College. The invitation came off the back of my first article written in this newspaper about AI and Providence College’s values. Therefore, I find it fitting to start this year in relation to how I did the last one. The Colloquium brought together students and professors from several different colleges in the Northeast with the expressed goal of discussing the current situation and future of AI use in both the world and the classroom. While I will not delve into the discussions held there —I will potentially save the topics from the Colloquium for later dates— I will, however, discuss an interesting idea I had developed and heard while there.
The idea was that in an age where the answer to a question or a problem is becoming meaningless with the advent of AI, the new emphasis of both education and the person should instead fall on the process of obtaining an answer rather than the answer itself. If a machine can get the solution in an instant, we should focus on that which makes us most human: our reason and thinking. The concept of reason and thinking being central to our humanity is not a new idea. In fact, it’s been a central pillar of philosophy since Socrates’ time. In our ever-changing world, this remains as relevant as it was then.
When thinking about school work, the idea of how you get it done may at first seem meaningless. When you are graded on the correctness of your answers, the path you take to get to them appears irrelevant. Why should anyone care about the “how,” when the “what” shows your proficiency? You have completed the task given to you and that is sufficient in displaying your capabilities. There are many ways to get the answer, but they all end in the same spot and that is what is important.
Yet now that a search engine or AI platform can give you that answer without any work, the answer no longer holds the same weight. If we circle back to the idea of the many ways to answer the same question, that path you carved now shows your understanding. Every twist in the road and every unpaved or paved section tells your grader everything they need to know: how you thought about it, what parts interested you, what caused you to struggle, and what brought out the best in you. It is perhaps time for us to judge the student on the web of ideas and the scaffolds that influence and hold them up. If educators focus more on probing the minds of learners during the act of work, instead of just in the aftermath, we can restore meaning to the educational process.
The modern age has robbed us of being able to take pleasure in the answers we get. Instead, we must pivot and begin to glorify the work we do. The thought processes and connections we make give meaning to work. It makes sense, as reason lies at the heart of humanity. When we emphasize and take pride in our acts of reason and thinking, especially in regard to work, it takes on a whole new fulfilling human direction. It is a great feeling when, at the end of the day, you are able to stamp something as your own, to see the merits of the work you have done. With a new school year upon us, there is no better time to take pride in the work that we do.