In which I am Ahab, and AI is guess who

 You would think that someone who has taught Moby-Dick would understand the dangers of becoming Ahab and giving in to monomania and hunting the white whale because "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." 

I am really trying to learn this lesson. 

AI is not completely pervasive, as best I can judge, but the 3 or 4 students in each class who keep using it madden me: "He tasks me, he heaps me." It's like getting a bad student evaluation out of 25 good ones: you can't let it go. 

And I am alone in this quest: for in-class courses, in-class writing is the answer, but for asynchronous ones we're on our own.  

Neither the university's academic honesty policy nor its guidance are of any help. If students are using AI it is definitely our fault for failing to be understanding, or nice, or write AI-proof composition-style assignments asking for personal narratives about their childhoods or a local issue (guess what? determined AI-ers fabricate those, too). 

The official policy is to teach them how to use AI "responsibly" by rewriting it, and I'm stuck back in the 20th century trying to get them to read and think and analyze using their brains, so I'm the one out of step. 

Yes, AI detectors are unreliable (though some are better than others), but when you get a piece of writing about a complex novel 2 hours after it was assigned, and said writing does not sound like human writing (it's perfect and soulless), it's a little confirming so that I don't feel that I'm nuts for seeing it. 

Yet it gets to me. I know that academic dishonesty has now been handed over to instructors as a "you problem," but that doesn't mean it's easy to drop it. 

The rubrics take care of some of it, but not all. I hate having to call them in to talk to them about possible AI use, because I want them to be ethical and do the work because they want to and because I have killed countless hours trying to make it interesting and accessible. I want to think well of them. Before those meetings, I'm torn up about it and can't think of other work. 

So I try not to stew about it, and then I can't stop thinking about it, and then I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about ways to get that white whale, and that way lies madness. 

Today when I sat down to grade, my eyes just plain shut (I am very tired). 

I don't know the answer, but I need to become Ishmael to find some balance.