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I’m somewhere in the middle when it comes to AI. I see its potential, especially as a creative and learning tool, but I also have real concerns about how quickly it’s being adopted without clear guidelines.

As an educator and someone working in media, I’m especially interested in how we can use AI in ways that support learning rather than replace critical thinking or creativity. I think we need more open conversations about expectations, transparency, and when not to use AI.

It would be really helpful to see concrete examples of how others are integrating AI into their teaching, along with honest discussions about challenges, not just benefits.

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We need to hear publicly on campus, and online, more voices like this often (such as monthly):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F3lm5t0Wko

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AI, Labor & The Commodification of Education For Profits & Control

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As we make decisions surrounding AI use, it is critical that we are inclusive to as many ideas and perspectives as possible. Creating an online forum for members of the Foothill community to share their thoughts in was an excellent step. Doing so opened the discussion for everyone to contribute to. To all of those who have, thank you for making your voices heard.

We must continue to provide opportunities for students to advocate and express their concerns about these matters. Students must have a hand in shaping the development of AI policy, as it will affect us first and foremost. I believe that the best way to do so would be to form a commission of student experts to advise on matters related to AI policy, a group that can provide their experience and represent the community in this area.

...

I did some more research and it seems like the AI Fellows group may fill this role. I was previously under the assumption that it was open to faculty only but upon reviewing their page (https://foothill.edu/gov/academic-senate/ai/) it seems like students may in fact join (though the deadline appears to have long passed). https://foothill.edu/president/board-reports-2026jan12.html - only 4 students appear to be members however. The role of students within this group or another like it must be expanded to ensure proper representation. Additionally, the arts and humanities should be considered for equivalent representation, not just STEM.

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As this forum concludes, I want to thank the AI Fellows—specifically the Community, Equity, and Communication subgroup—for their work in building this digital 'town square.'

Following the research shared by Ben Stefonik and the Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences students, it’s clear that the next step has been listening, thinking, and exploring further. I encourage us to participate in discussions like this and make our opinions known so that we are operating as democratic and collective communities. Creating a space where students, faculty, and administrators work together as a team fosters our campus culture. Thank you for your leadership in helping us develop visions of and pathways to the future.

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I'm appalled by the lack of concern over students' use of AI to do the heavy lifting for everything from reading, writing, and test-taking. Foothill has purposely avoided the protection of online test proctoring. Did you know students can add an AI extension to literally have AI take the test for them? We have to utilize resources to preserve integrity.

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There is a lot of fear shared here. Fear of unknowing fueled by social media. Unlimited access and effective training will move us from unknowing to a place where we choose, use, and develop AI that supports and enhances our learning experiences.

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I detest AI, and it is terrifying how much it is being pushed at institutions like Foothill. I even dropped out of an English Lit class because the professor was forcing students to rely on an AI "thought partner" for every step of every exercise, even though real life classmates were right there. This was an English class, for crying out loud! I remember being taught in high school how to proofread my own work, how to look words up in a thesaurus and decide on the best one to use, and how to close read critically and analyze literary texts with my own brain. This is college, and it should be a step up from that. Instead, we have [name redacted] and other "professors" like her pressuring her students to rely on AI thought partners (that she forces you to name, to subconsciously make you trust AI) because she has this as a non-negotiable graded metric. Most ironically, her class was all about "saving the environment", which is something that is in no way compatible with AI. Professors cannot be getting grants or extra funding to push this garbage when they are getting paid and trusted to teach, not mindlessly churn out whatever their "thought partner" commands them to.

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Aside from the ethical concerns I have, I am deeply concerned that as an institution of higher learning, there seems to be an accelerated path towards the acceptance of this technology without ample opportunities or authentic dialogue to really explore the implications of using this technology or making it available (and acceptable) for students' use.

I have a lot to say about the ethical concerns for the technology, but these concerns have been dismissed in various spaces where I have shared them. For example, some ethical concerns that matter to me (and many others) are: how the technology was created (unethically on multiple levels), how it essentially "steals" intellectual property from writers and artists and academics, how it negatively impacts our physical earthly environments and is especially detrimental to low-income, communities of color, how it is eroding critical thinking and basic literacy, etc.

But what most concerns me on a more immediate level is the way this technology is so quickly eroding the trust that is inherently necessary in a learning environment. As a result of the normalization of generative ai, faculty have a hard time trusting their students, students have a hard time trusting their professors (when they are being accused of using ai even if they have not), and students have a hard time trusting other students who may be running their work through ai for peer reviews, or who may not be authentically engaging with their ideas online because they are merely using ai to respond to one another. Some professors are not transparent about using ai in their own planning and/or assessments, and this also creates a distrust among students. How are we to create meaningful learning experiences for students when this lack of trust is so prevalent in the classroom?

Additionally- there seems to be a lack of solidarity among colleagues. It is true that the use of ai can be useful in many ways depending on the discipline in which it is used (and how it is used). Yet in discussions I've participated in throughout the district, it seems that the concerns of professors in the humanities are dismissed or these concerns are characterized as being grounded in ignorance or a stubborn resistance to changing technologies. How the use of ai shapes a STEM classroom may look very different in a humanities classroom, but this kind of nuance is rarely acknowledged or is often diminished in conversation.

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It's been extremely concerning to see how quickly organizations have rushed to glorify technology that so heavily discourages critical thinking. To see uncritical endorsement of generative AI programs in an educational institution, of all places, is especially disappointing. I go to school to learn how to think for myself, and to learn from teachers and peers who are also thinking for themselves. I need to be able to trust that the education I'm paying for is an actual education, and not just the unverified ramblings of a computer program that was created to sound universally confident at the cost of factual accuracy. If I feel like I can't hold onto that trust anymore, well, there's always other colleges.

(There's also the underlying environmental issues and constant security concerns, which I won't go into myself. Others have put it far better than I could.)

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Thank you to AI Fellows, Ben Stefonik, and the students from the Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences class for their excellent "AI Policies at Foothill: What Do Students Think?" forum. Seeing students, teachers and administrators working together as teams - facilitating discussion and valuing each other's voices - is inspiring. Their research can inform decision making at the campus level to plan for the future. Thank you for your leadership.

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We are very quickly losing research and critical thinking skills and creativity/artistic motivation. Moreover, we cannot be aiding in accelerating the climate crisis. Furthermore, we are accusing people of using AI who are neurodivergent or simply have certain styles of writing. These same predatory companies are using this technology to bomb children and monitor us. Enough is enough- ban generative AI from schools, reject AI companies, promote creativity and thinking

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I'm 50-50 about AI. It can be a good learning tool, but it can not replace human interaction.

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I'm both a likely-neurodiverse Foothill student, and the dad of a definitely-neurodiverse Foothill student. I am very concerned about the bias AI-detection tools have for flagging content written by ASD brains, and concerned about the implications of such tools for honest students, in general.

To whatever extent educators are trying to flag content as AI-generated, the burden really needs to be on the professor for proving misconduct given how devastating an academic dishonesty finding is. Academic careers are long, involve many deliverables, and even a 1% false positive rate per-assignment is going to add up to a wildly unacceptable risk of grave injustice.

To be specific: if a detection tool has a false positive rate of just 1%, then about 18% of honest students will be flagged for at least one violation after 20 assignments. That's basic probability.

Can automated enforcement achieve even that 1% false positive rate? I am skeptical.

Still, it's extremely important that students not be denied learning that comes from composing original text, code, --whatever. When I first saw how good gen AI was getting, my immediate thought was: "best buy stock in bluebooks!" I still think this old-school response is the best one for educators to take when enforcement is required.

AI is a serious challenge. I'd ask the college to construe its first duty to be to the honest students, not to ones who are ultimately cheating themselves.

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AI is being pushed by big tech companies at losses of billions of dollars. Once everyone uses AI for everything, these companies can control everything, and since people will have forgotten how to think for themselves, there will be no resistance.

The problems of inaccuracy without responsibility, soaring hardware costs, and pollution which destroys the lives of hundreds of people are incredibly minor compared to the obvious future when Google, Meta, and Amazon own everything and everyone.

AI as a technology is incredible, but in its current form, I believe it's leading to a 1984-like world where Gemini takes the place of Big Brother. People worship it as all-knowing, losing the ability to think for themselves in the process.

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I'm concerned with how quickly AI tools were distributed to students, before, I feel, the campus has had an opportunity talk, debate, and learn. We've had presentations that basically encourage us to use AI and even show you how to use AI, but no real discussion about 1. Environmental considerations (I did go to the one Bob Cormia did), 2. Ethical considerations on how AI can replicate the racism and sexism inherent in our society 3. ethical considerations on how faculty, staff, and admin use AI (use AI for SLO work or to write our J1s for example). 4. Ethical considerations around WHO created these tools and WHY as well as what they are being USED for. AI is mass surveillance!! AI is being used for war and5. Ethical considerations - AI STOLE people's content and now we are using it for free without giving the original author credit. Winter '26 was the first time I had real cheating in my course. Students were using AI to write their 1-pg paper. Because I don't use AI, I didn't recognize it at first, but when I did, I was so deeply disappointed that in my elective class, they would short change their learning. Lastly, it feels like the District's primary value is productivity. That comes before anything else. Who cares about the environment when you can get your report in on time?! If the District cared about learning, I believe we'd have spent at least a year studying AI and discussing the implications in our teaching BEFORE giving access to students.

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Environmental impact and energy usage -

The rapid construction of data centers that contaminate local water supply and have rapidly increased national power usage, faster than we can keep up with. Such data centers are often constructed in working class communities, and (as it stands) many are proposed to be built on wildlife preserves. The working class people living in areas affected by data centers no longer have access to clean water and have higher electricity bills without their consent. Data centers have greatly increased the rate at which we approach irreversible climate change damage — is your (inaccurate) AI generated response worth that?

THIS IS REAL INFORMATION, NOT FEARMONGERING. LOOK IT UP. There are countless reports of people whose taps are dry or whose water is contaminated, explicitly due to new data centers.

A moment of desperate begging: please evaluate if any of the benefits you get from using AI are worth fresh water and wildlife. Please, please evaluate that. Please evaluate what it means that you choose to interact with tools that have this impact, or encourage others to use them. Please, pause for a moment and think about it.

There is a data center proposed to be built in Gilroy and one being built in South San Jose (where I live). This is happening here and now. I will be affected, you will be affected, everyone you know will be affected. Please understand that.

Impact on learning and critical thinking - when generative AI does the work for you, do you really learn? Students are losing the ability to assess the quality and reliability of sources for themselves, and the ability to synthesize evidence to form an informed opinion for themselves. And the information provided by generative AI models is often incorrect, misleading, and/or unclear.

Learning is communal - we best learn together and from each other. A real person (professor, instructor, tutor, classmate, friend) and intuitively respond to our learning needs, both emotional and academic, in real-time. Replacing community with AI prompts is extremely dangerous to learning and advancement. Think about how many students work alone and only ask generative AI (not their friends, not their professors, not a tutor) when they get stuck, and how lonely that is! Building support networks of real people is critical.

I want to emphasize that I am a 20 year-old STEM student. I am the target demographic of all of these tools—I am surrounded by them at every corner. I have seen the ways my classmates and friends use them for “help,” and yet, I refuse to ignore the ways they cause harm. I truly think there is no benefit of generative AI that is worth the environmental costs.

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AI has pros and cons in the mental health space. However as an instructor it's helped me greatly with developing experiential exercises for specific wellness tools and concepts to practice with students. I'd love to embrace it as a tool, but needs major guard rails

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AI can be good, bad, and ugly.

The good: It can help you brainstorm and come up with ideas you can later refine. As someone said, "Think of AI as a really smart friend."

The bad: It is wrong too often. It never wants to admit it doesn't know something. It's the ultimate mansplainer.

Some students see it as the "smart friend" who will do their homework for them, so they don't have to think.

The ugly: It's being used to wage war and for mass surveillance. It may some day kill us all not because it's become super intelligent or sentient, but because we have foolishly handed it the power to do so.

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Promoting AI usage in any capacity is unconscionable.

Data centers are depleting our clean drinking water, among other extreme environmental concerns.

Using AI suppresses critical thinking, a skill that students are supposed to be improving and honing while they are in college.

As far as using it as a tutoring or study tool, AI hallucinates or straight up intentionally lies to users. This makes it an ineffective study tool.

Currently AI is being developed to carry out drone strikes against human beings with no human input. This should be considered a crime against humanity. Using AI supports development of these tools.

Do yourself and everyone around you a favor and block all AI usage and its further development.

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I'll be honest that I am worried and concerned about how our brains will change as a result of AI. I was talking with a student who was using AI a lot and was feeling he was "losing brain cells" and I could feel his worry. He consciously cut back on his AI usage but it took a lot of self control to do that. I can feel my brain working when I wrestle with a problem or even try to recall something and don't just rely on Google to tell me the answer. How much will our younger generations' brains "lose their cells or grooves" as a result of using AI tools without conscious awareness of the impact on their critical thinking and brain development? It's moving so fast without many guardrails and we have seen that when tech companies are leading the way, led by profit coupled with innovation, they don't really care about the unintended consequences. So I have not been as wholehearted about embracing using AI tools. Am I just being paranoid?

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We need institutional access to the pro versions of these tools to do our jobs and to understand how the products work.

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I use Gemini AI to help students locate local cafés and co-op galleries that match their artistic style and theme by taking a quick snapshot of their art. For many of our students, the thought of locating or approaching a gallery to sell their work feels out of reach. I’ve watched students become more confident about writing to a gallery, applying for an art competition, or narrowing down their goals by brainstorming with AI. Since AI doesn’t add an emotional layer, it can give clear, candid, and constructive feedback about their art and even suggest pricing for their work.

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While in certain spaces this may be a valuable tool, in the realm of critical thinking it is a disaster. Critical thinking is vital to education, but ai bypasses this process, allowing the machine to replace thinking.

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Am grateful that I was a student before this technology was available. Its ability to respond to prompts would have been an overwhelming temptation to save time while I was in school. I strongly encourage anyone in school now to write your own essays and responses. Writing is critical thinking, so be sure to practice both regularly. You learn what you think by writing. Don't let the ease and efficiency of AI prevent you from thinking and expressing yourself and developing the skills and stamina to do both regularly.

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A new tool in our toolbox. Serves as a 24x7 tutor for students. Provides information instantly on whatever and whenever we ask. Yes, the AI should have "guard-rails. Humans should also have guard-rails, and receive some basic training on how AI works, set of boundary conditions, including ethical use, possibility AI is providing incorrect information, etc. Once the human user is "trained", up to the human user to gauge how to best leverage the information provided by the AI within the guidelines and policies established.

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In the social sciences, we are at times disappointed that students use AI answers in responding to our questions - there seems to be very little of the student's own thought process in the answers. I am trying to find ways to help students with the process of writing and critical thinking but many times they use AI for each step of the process making it difficult for me to see cognitive growth in my students - as well as how I can help guide them in improving their own skills.

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I love using it as a think partner. For example asking ChatGPT to provide positive and negative responses to an idea for a project. It also helps me expand my idea which has tremendously cut down time and execution.

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Hi everyone,

Like many of you, I’m very interested in how AI tools can enhance learning and creativity. At times, it can feel as though we are being inundated with new software and platforms. Yet at other moments, it’s genuinely exciting to see the positive ways AI can support people—particularly in expanding access to information and learning for individuals who are visually impaired. It will be interesting to continue exploring both the possibilities and the practical uses of these tools as they evolve.

Best wishes colleagues,

Joan McQuade, Ph.D

Humanities Instructor, Foothill College

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• I encourage you to
  o use AI tools to support your learning
  o learn more about AI tools that are now or will become available
  o share what you learn with others in our community, including me

• I wish I could
  o guide you to useful AI tools
  o help you choose (or build) an AI tool for a given task

• I ask that you
  o reflect on the purpose of generative AI systems
  o reflect on biases built into any generative AI system
  o cite any AI tools you use
  o don't make me read AI output thinking it's your original work

• I promise to
  o help you make sense of the stochastic nature of generative AI
  o offer guidance on AI bias
  o tell folks if you're dropping uncited AI work on me

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In the bio department, we're pretty sure AI isn't taking our jobs until it learns how to clean up a lab bench. But it is an incredible tool for our under-resourced students. Having a tireless, 24/7 tutor available when they're studying the Krebs cycle at midnight after work is a huge win for equity. I'm all for leaning into this. Let me know if anyone wants to compare notes!