Teach Students to Think With, Without and About AI
Preview:
The University of Chicago is rebuilding its core curriculum around a two-part principle: students should learn to be ethical, skeptical, and ambitious about AI, and to think both with and without machines. Undergraduates will take a writing course free of any machine assistance, and the humanities and social science cores will exclude technology from the classroom, while a computational thinking requirement is expected within the next year. The law school has adopted the same sequence, requiring first-year students to write and reason without AI before integrating the tools in years two and three. Building a foundation of human-centered thinking first, then layering in AI, offers a path between critics who see no proper use for the technology and those who want it woven into every course.
Originally published: September 20, 2026
Author: Paul Alivisatos
Position: President
Institution: University of Chicago
Published by: The Wall Street Journal