Two views of AI-assisted teaching (spoiler: I think I'm right and they're wrong)

When I teach online, I use tools that allow students to comment, some of which allow a longer response in a discussion board, and some of which allow line-by-line annotation of the kind you would get in hypothes.is. and assign an auto-grade. Let's call it hypothes.is for short. 

But based on the teaching philosophy I outlined in an earlier post--"I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well"--I have told them that I am reading everything they write in my class, and I am doing it, too. I turn off all the intrusive "AI can generate the instructor's responses for you" defaults lest they infect what's left of my brain. 

It is my (possibly touching and naive belief) that if you connect individually with students by responding to them, even if they are online, they will have a better experience and might be less likely to plop everything into ChatGPT or its numerous hellspawn siblings and give me AI instead of their thoughts. 

There are a few concessions to knowing that they might try AI. I've disabled copying and pasting, to "encourage" them to write their own stuff for two reasons. 

• First, if they use AI, they still have to type it out, and given how low-stakes this is, some of them might choose to do the work as the path of least resistance. I had a student inquire about not being able to copy and paste, and I said, "nope, not in this class."
• Some students in previous semesters have copied and pasted from another student's work, a bold move given that I comment and say things on the board like "that's what X said above" and privately "see me." If they don't think I'm reading responses, they might think I won't notice. I notice. 

The other day, I was talking to a colleague ("they" for anonymity) and mentioned that I had just spent a couple of hours responding to students in hypothes.is and writing individual comments. 

Colleague looked at me as if I had grown two heads. "Here's a tip. Don't you know that hypothes.is grades them? You don't have to read all those."

Me: "Yes, but I want to respond to the students."

Colleague: "I never read them! They talk to each other! I look at their questions and once in a while dip into the comments for fun. The grades post themselves."

Me: "I think it's important." 

Colleague just stares at me as if their opinion of my intelligence has just dropped by double digits. Clearly anyone who had any smarts at all, in their view, would stop paying attention to stuff like student comments.

My first thought was "IDGAF what you think."

My second thought was "Your poor students. No wonder they pile on the AI garbage and think no one is reading, because in some cases no one is."

Yes, all this time is time and brainpower I could spend writing. 

But doesn't someone have to pay attention?