Jonathan Swift’s Warning for AI in the Classroom

Summary

In this opinion essay, college professor Dónal Gill uses Jonathan Swift’s satire of the Academy of Lagado in Gulliver’s Travels to question the assumption that technological progress is inherently beneficial or inevitable. He compares the academy’s machine for producing books without genius or study with large language models that can generate polished text while potentially displacing reading, writing, and sustained intellectual effort. Gill argues that generative AI and constant device use encourage distraction and cognitive offloading, weakening students’ focus, reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving before those abilities are fully developed. He acknowledges that AI may help with second-language learning and support students with disabilities, but cites a Brookings report that concludes the risks of classroom use outweigh its benefits and warns about dependence. The essay describes competing responses from professors, including supervised AI assignments, unreliable AI detection, redesigned in-class assessments, and outright bans. Gill ultimately bans phones and laptops, largely abandons PowerPoint, and relies on chalk-and-talk teaching to keep course work within his view. He says the policy has received broadly positive student responses, even as students feel pressure to use AI because they believe peers are doing so and resent being treated as suspects. The author also links AI use to concerns about therapy, companionship, employment, data-center impacts, and the erosion of trust between teachers and students. His conclusion is a defense of demanding human education and a call for teachers to protect students’ attention and intellectual self-cultivation rather than treating AI adoption as unavoidable.