In an interview with City Times last September, Chancellor Greg Smith shared a quote that comes up a lot in discussions about artificial intelligence at the San Diego Community College District.
“Your job’s not going to be taken by AI, but it will be taken by someone who knows AI,” Smith said.
This “get on or get left behind” mentality sums up the approach the district has taken on the issue. However, some professors at City are concerned about what the technology could mean for their students and their jobs.
Leading the push for AI adoption has been the district’s Department of Institutional Innovation and Effectiveness. Vice Chancellor Michelle Fischthal, named one of the 2025 leading women in AI by ASUGSV, is eager to see the tech adopted. She uses generative AI herself and encourages her staff to do the same.
Over the last year, Vice Chancellor Michelle Fischthal organized an ongoing series of workshops aimed at helping faculty understand and use generative AI in classrooms. According to Fischthal, the goal of these sessions is to help teachers work through their qualms about AI. Meanwhile, the district is hiring dedicated staff and creating the infrastructure to provide the new systems.
In September, SDCCD was selected to participate in the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Institute on AI, Pedagogy and Curriculum, which will help schools integrate AI into their teaching and address the challenges it presents, according to a district announcement.
On top of that, The district also received a grant from the California Learning Lab to develop equitable AI education. City College is participating in another Learning Lab-sponsored program that will help the school develop AI tutors for specific classes.
But some faculty at City College worry there are difficult questions, ranging from practical to existential, that must be answered before the tech can be adopted.
To address this, the City College Academic Senate formed a working group to explore possible policy recommendations for the school to adopt, according to English professor and Senate President Mona Alsoraimi-Espiritu, who spearheaded the group.
“We’re looking at everything, the good, the bad, the ugly,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “We want to make sure that we are not jumping into technology blindly.”
Beginning last fall, departments have held meetings on how AI impacts their area of study. The notes from these meetings will be compiled into a position paper, similar to one put out by UCSD’s Senate-Administrative Working Group, according to Alsoraimi-Espiritu.
The paper should be available by the end of March, according to Alsoraimi-Espiritu.
One of the top concerns is academic integrity. For many students, generative AI is an opportunity to just not do their homework.
“I’m consistently reading papers that don’t sound like they’re written in a human voice,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said.
Not only does this make grading difficult for teachers, but it also robs students of an important part of the learning process.
“For English specifically, reading and writing and thinking are all connected,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “So while I do understand that AI can be valuable in some areas … I think that it’s developmentally not appropriate, in my opinion, in the early English classes.”
Pete Haro, a history professor at City, echoed these concerns and worries that students are short-changing themselves if they choose to use the technology.
“You are not coming here to memorize names and dates,” Haro said. “Think for yourself.”
Fischthal sees things differently. She believes AI preserves or possibly even expands the opportunities for critical thinking.
“I can’t get out what I want if I don’t know what I need,” Fischthal said.
To her, AI is just another tool that can be used to achieve a desired outcome. It does not replace the thinking required to come up with that outcome in the first place.
However, she stressed there is a difference between productive and unproductive uses of AI.
Some teachers are leaning into the new tech, encouraging their students to use AI in ways that advance learning.
Professor Mohammed Al Ani, who teaches business administration and statistics at City, believes AI can be productive in certain circumstances and has begun requiring its use in some of his courses. In his business administration classes, students’ final project is a presentation partially generated by AI.
Though he acknowledges the potential downsides, Al Ani views AI education as a crucial part of preparing students for the business world. Competitors will take any advantage they can get. If you choose not to use a tool that will improve your efficiency, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage, Al Ani said.
“The best thing we can do is have that conversation,” Al Ani said.
But even teachers who are not incorporating AI directly into their classes realize they have to adapt.
“I think that all of us are learning that we have to change our classes,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “Whether you use AI or you don’t, it’s here.”
In response to the new tech, she has shifted the focus of her courses to be on process over results. This means encouraging students to develop their own voice and perspective, rather than teaching them to recreate a strict, formal structure.
Some teachers are considering abandoning the academic essay entirely because the format is easy for AI to recreate, according to Alsoraimi-Espiritu, calling into question the value of teaching it at all.
With all these changes, some teachers have a deeper worry: automation.
When interviewed last fall, History professor Pete Haro voiced concerns that AI is bringing that process to jobs previously thought safe.
This has been happening since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, according to Haro: new technology produces something faster and more efficiently than before, but in the process, workers become replaceable.
Haro fears AI will subject teachers to the same forces industrial workers experienced at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He thinks in the future we may see artificially generated courses taught by artificial professors, and he is concerned about the effect of normalizing the tech.
“Is it useful for some things? ” Haro said. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean we should all drink the Kool-Aid.”
Since the interview, news has come out that may confirm his fears.
UCLA recently announced the launch of its first AI-generated course, a comparative literature class created using Kudu, an AI program designed for this purpose. The textbook is AI-generated, as well as the assignments. There is even an AI teacher’s assistant to help students with their homework.
The professor, Zrinka Stahuljak, told the UCLA Newsroom the new format allows her to standardize the course so other teachers can be subbed in when she’s not teaching the class. Stahuljak also said it would free her up to focus on more important aspects of teaching, such as student interaction.
Before the news, Alsoraimi-Espiritu wondered what it would mean to have portions of the job automated away.
“What is that most important thing? That’s what I keep going back to,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “I asked the faculty … we keep being told that AI is going to make room for us to do the important things, the creative things, the things that matter most … So what are those important things?’”
“And someone said ‘everything, everything we do is important.’”
Editors note: This article was updated to correct technical issues.
