ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that has the ability to produce dialogue-like responses and even essays, has sent alarm bells ringing in teachers’ lounges across America. Some have even gone so far as to predict the death of student papers! But not everyone is convinced that it’s time to panic just yet.

While ChatGPT and other AI systems are being used in realms beyond education, classrooms seem to be where fears about the bot’s misuse, and ideas to adapt alongside evolving technology, are playing out first. The realities of ChatGPT are forcing professors to take a long hard look at today’s teaching methods and what they actually offer to students. Current types of assessment, including the basic essays ChatGPT can mimic, may become obsolete. But instead of branding the AI as a gimmick or threat, some educators say this chatbot could end up recalibrating the way they teach, what they teach and why they teach it.

Take Santa Clara University for example, where this month, 32 students began a course called “Artificial Intelligence and Ethics” where the usual method of assessment – writing – would no longer be in use. The course is taught by Brian Green, who also serves as director of the university’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and in lieu of essays, he’ll be setting up one-on-one sessions with each student to hold ten-minute conversations. He said it doesn’t take any more time to evaluate that than to grade an essay. Genius, right?

But, let’s be real, such an approach may not be realistic in all educational contexts, especially in schools where resources are scarcer and teacher-to-student ratios are worse. On some campuses, the response to such technology has simply been to restrict access. Earlier this month, the New York City Department of Education announced that ChatGPT would be banned on networks and devices throughout its public schools.

But bans are hardly a solution. Anyone with access to a smartphone – such as 95 percent of Americans between the ages of 13 and 17, according to Pew Research Center polling conducted last spring – can easily bypass these restrictions without needing a school computer or campus Wi-Fi. And some teachers say they see bans on ChatGPT as misguided responses that misunderstand what the tool can and cannot provide.

ChatGPT may have better syntax than humans, but it’s shallow on research and critical thinking. As Lauren Goodlad, a professor of English and comparative literature at Rutgers University and the chair of its Critical Artificial Intelligence initiative, said, “These are statistical models,” she said. “And so they favor probability, as in they are trained on data, and the only reason they work as well as they do is that they are looking for probable responses to a prompt.”

So, while ChatGPT may not be the end of writing as we know it, it does force us to consider the limitations of technology and the importance of critical thinking and human creativity in education. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet.