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As top law schools outlaw laptops and AI tools, smart companies are realizing that “unplugged” talent is exactly what their businesses need.
A few universities are cracking down not only on AI but on computers in general, and if you’re looking to hire people who can think, you should throw your support toward these schools. And then, perhaps, other schools will follow suit.
It’s starting with the law schools, which makes sense, because if you want someone who can think through a problem, it’s a lawyer. AI is never going to give you a unique legal strategy, as it will just pull in what others have done.
Inside Higher Ed reports that law schools such as the University of California, Berkeley, which said students are prohibited from using AI in “conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit,” and the University of Chicago Law school which takes it a step further and said it “will ban laptops, tablets and phones in the classroom for first-year law students beginning this fall as part of its broader strategy of adapting legal education for the AI era.”
I’m 100 percent on board and wish schools would expand this to other areas.
Students need to think, not produce
This is not me being anti–AI– this is being pro-education. The point of reading books, writing articles, and solving problems is not to list the books’ themes, produce a paper, or find answers to trigonometry problems. It’s to learn how to think. It’s about problem-solving, logical reasoning, and generating new and varied ideas.
Students who rely on AI to accomplish these tasks are not learning the key skills they need to survive in the world of work. Yes, you can use AI for a variety of tasks, but if you don’t understand how those tasks are carried out and what’s going on behind the scenes, you’ll get yourself in trouble.
If you can’t work through a project plan, examine evidence, and make quality decisions and recommendations without AI’s help, you won’t be able to evaluate whatever AI spits out at you. The last thing your business needs is mindlessly produced AI slop.
Don’t students need AI skills?
Absolutely. AI is definitely important. But, as every one of us who has been in the working world since before November 2022, when ChatGPT launched, knows, you can learn it on the job. And, of course, universities can offer classes that focus on AI usage. I can get behind that.
But learning how to organize your thoughts, write your own papers, and even edit your own grammar brings value. It is what teaches you to understand how things work.
I recall an English teacher explaining that we could choose to use techniques such as using all lowercase in poetry when we understood the rules. I feel like AI is the same way. I can use AI to help me write an FMLA policy because I know the Family Medical Leave Act very well. I can see when it hallucinates, and I know how to fact-check. But if I asked an intern to do the same, the intern wouldn’t be able to spot those problems because they haven’t had the time to gain the expertise.
For your tech people who will be using AI to help with coding, they still need to understand the underlying logic and reasoning that goes into coding in order to make sure things work. How can they troubleshoot effectively if they don’t know what good code looks like?
AI can be a part of your tool chest, but if you’re looking to hire new grads, look for those who can produce quality work without that particular tool. You’ll be better off.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
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