If you are a Columbia/Barnard affiliate with campus access, please use your Columbia/Barnard email when registering.
Each attendee must have their OWN registration and email address.
Registration for external guests closes at 4PM on April 8. Registration will automatically close at that time. Columbia/Barnard affiliates may register at the door.
As generative AI reshapes how students read, write, and think, the university is compelled to reexamine its fundamental purpose. If writing has long been understood as a mode of thought, what follows when that process can be delegated to, or mediated by, algorithmic systems?
This panel convenes faculty, students, and practitioners to consider how these transformations are unfolding in real time. Drawing on experiences within and beyond the classroom, panelists will assess where AI augments learning and where it diminishes it, how it reconfigures the social dimensions of education, and what these shifts reveal about the aims of undergraduate study.
The discussion will also address broader epistemic and institutional stakes: whether AI compresses intellectual difference into standardized forms, and what it means to teach thinking when the tools that structure it are embedded in corporate infrastructures. At the same time, the panel will consider potential gains, including expanded access to analytical resources, new modes of engagement with complex material, and alternative pathways into academic inquiry.
