Wayne State College’s faculty has many opinions on the future of artificial intelligence in education.
As the Dean of Arts and Humanities at WSC, Bohnert handles many issues within the field of journalism. He also has many conversations with Wayne State students over various topics during the week. Because of this, he has many ideas on the topic of AI usage within this department.
“I feel like we need to give students the skills to think critically, to be able to problem solve, to be able to communicate,” Bohnert said, “Those sorts of soft skills are what employers want because all of the technology is changing so fast. You know, AI might do the things that we train you to do, but you need to have the skills to train AI, or to be able to pivot to a different career.”
Even as the world of technology continues to evolve and change rapidly, there will always be a spot for humans in the workforce of mass communication.
“It might help, but it’s never going to replace, or even take fifty percent of the work anytime soon,” Bohnert said.
This is a reassuring statement if you are in the fields of broadcasting or journalism right now. Many students feel that their jobs are already being taken away by AI in different ways and feel that they could never replicate the efficiency of an AI.
Pat Janssen, a professor at WSC, has been in the broadcasting field for many years after graduating from WSC in 2006. He does not allow the use of AI in any of his classes for multiple reasons.
“The reason why I often dissuade the use of generative AI in any of my classes is that, the information that AI provides is often wrong or incorrect,” Janssen said, “And also, I want people to learn to think for themselves, if you use the crutch of AI, it gets you out of the habit of thinking.”
Both Bohnert and Janssen agreed respectively on the fact that the biggest issue with AI is that it stops the student from actually learning the subject. If a student uses AI in an assignment, are they learning anything from it, or are they more worried about completing the assignment on time.
“I don’t want people to lose that muscle in their brain to learn how to solve problems, to learn how to find information for themselves because that is the key to journalism,” Janssen said.
The journalism field is built on creativity and problem solving and that is a big question mark for AI according to Janssen. He thinks that recognizing issues and thinking through problems is something that an AI cannot do yet. If you take the human out of journalism, then you will not have a complete story, and it will not be creative at all.
On a smaller level here at Wayne State, Bohnert thinks there is a clear issue with student usage of AI.
“I think where it comes into an issue, at least at the college level, is that we use writing especially to help us understand what students know,” Bohnert said. “If they’re not writing it, then we don’t know if they are getting it or not. This is the same reason why Janssen does not allow AI usage in his classes.
When it comes to local news, Janssen has plenty of experience working in those fields. He says that for the most part, where he has worked, there are still human operated newsrooms and journalists. The only exemption of this was a few of his employees that used AI to write out quotes from stories that they were working on. This has saved them time but can also be challenging due to AI not always being able to completely get it right.
When it comes to AI taking jobs, Janssen thinks that there might be a chance of some smaller jobs being taken.
“It’s largely not the journalist that have been replaced, but I do think there is a pretty significant risk of some journalistic jobs being replaced,” Janssen said.
In an article written by Courtney C. Radsch called, “Can Journalism Survive AI,” she talked about how many jobs are being cut in journalism due to AI usage. Radsch mentioned that nearly three newspapers had been closed and almost 3,000 jobs were lost each week in 2024 due to those companies using AI. This shows how much of a problem the entire journalism industry is having when it comes to AI usage in the field.
“Our students that graduate from Wayne State are going to have to go out and need to be prepared to use AI and all the things that it can do,” Bohnert said.