New Delhi: The University of Chicago has now announced that it will bar AI use in its core social science courses starting this fall, according to a memo from the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, obtained by the student newspaper Chicago Maroon.
The policy will apply only to undergraduate core sequences, not graduate courses. The university is set to ban laptops, phones, smartwatches, wearables, and recorded lectures, and it mandates assignments to be completed without AI use. The goal, per division head Jenny Trinitapoli’s memo, is to teach students “to read, write, and think without dependence on AI”.
However, the policy allows narrow faculty-approved exceptions for work revolving around dataset analysis or citation research.
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Under a developing policy
This is not UChicago’s first rodeo with tech restriction. In July, its Law School announced a device ban for first-year courses—a total restriction on laptops, tablets, and phones, all off-limits as part of a broader “Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era” initiative aimed at teaching students to think “with, without, and about AI.”
University President Paul Alivisatos has echoed this move as a larger attempt to prepare the students for a fast-moving technological landscape without letting it erode independent thought.
The rationale extends beyond just banning AI, it is meant to promote and protect the Socratic method—the back-and-forth questioning on legal theories and principles that professors use instead of lecturing. It is meant to prepare students for life in court.
“We think that kind of exchange should happen without it being intermediated by machines,” Adam Chilton, dean of UChicago Law, told Inside Higher Ed. Excessive use of AI in law classrooms also undermines the value of such an exercise: where you are put on the spot and forced to think, a student quietly consulting a chatbot for solutions defeats the purpose.
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Professors too aren’t exempt from AI use. They can’t use LLMs for grading unless they disclose and validate it against authentic human grading. UChicago is not alone. UC Berkeley’s law school rolled out a sweeping policy effective this summer that prohibits students from using AI to conceptualise, outline, draft, revise, or translate any graded work, and bans AI use entirely during exams.
However, there has been some pushback. Chicago Maroon had to clarify that students with disabilities could still use AI; the ban was not total and absolute for them. This is the university’s broader move toward institutional reckoning, which seeks to lift student and academic dependence on AI.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)