Published in the Winter 2025 MLA Newsletter
In October 2025, the MLA Executive Council issued a statement, drafted by the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching, on educational technologies and AI agents. We interviewed two members of the task force, Matthew Kirschenbaum and Anna Mills, about the importance of the statement and how MLA members can put the statement into action.
What prompted the task force to draft these guidelines?
Matthew Kirschenbaum: I think there’s a widespread sense that as ed tech (including AI and now agentic AI) becomes more and more widespread, universities are ceding more and more of their core functions to third-party vendors and providers. What was once only “software” as a service is now absorbing actual missions and operations. This statement is one small attempt to slow that process down, to give pause by pressing pause. Not because we’re antitechnology, but because we think we’re at the point where faculty members are very close to losing control over the instructional experience, whether we’re talking about infrastructure and support or (increasingly) content and curriculum.
Anna Mills: Responses to the MLA task force’s May 2025 survey showed how widely our perspectives on AI vary, but we noted that 90% of survey respondents wanted us to advocate for “public awareness of the continuing value of human reading and writing processes.” When we saw AI browsers autonomously completing assignments in learning management systems, we recognized a direct threat to that value—and an issue on which we could speak with one voice. In fall 2025, we noted a flurry of social media posts expressing concern about the ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet releases. Educators across the spectrum—from AI skeptics to enthusiasts—recognized that letting these agents loose in learning environments posed an unnecessary threat to academic integrity. At the same time, we were watching learning management systems like Canvas announce partnerships with AI companies. It became clear to us that if faculty members are to continue to design pedagogy to cultivate human reading and writing, we need to have a say in shaping digital learning environments, and we need tech companies to cooperate.
What’s been the response to the statement from educators?
MK: The responses I’ve seen have been overwhelmingly positive. I think there’s a real hunger out there for people to see their professional organizations taking on advocacy and leadership roles as these technologies infiltrate core teaching and instructional activities. Frankly, there’s a lot of anger out there too, and I think this statement helps show that one of the major professional organizations in the humanities is listening.
AM: Educators have largely seemed grateful. We’ve seen notes of thanks on Bluesky and LinkedIn, coverage in The Verge and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and mentions on various blogs. Faculty members appreciate the call for faculty leadership in decision-making about AI integrations. At the same time, the statement has raised awareness about the distinct threat that agentic AI browsers pose. We are all aware that students can copy an assignment into a chatbot and then copy and paste or retype the chatbot’s output, but it’s worse if the chatbot can complete the assignment directly without the student even needing to know what it was about.
How do you envision this statement being used to enact the changes you want to see and prevent the misuses it describes?
MK: I think the statement does some good simply by existing as a statement under the imprimatur of the MLA. It offers members on individual campuses evidence of more widespread professional consideration and concern, and it carries the weight of an organization that has been a voice for language and literature teaching and scholarship for nearly a century and a half. Hopefully the statement will be a focal point for further attention and discussion, including also educating the membership about the new threats posed specifically by agentic AI.
AM: My hope is that the statement helps catalyze broader public pressure—pressure that leads AI companies to stop their systems from autocompleting assignments in learning management systems. Yes, students will still find ways to cheat with AI, but companies should do what they can to reduce misuse; they shouldn’t just make academic fraud easy and cheap and leave teachers to deal with the consequences. For this to happen, we need many voices calling for AI and ed-tech companies to stop facilitating academic fraud. We’d love to see sister organizations in higher education or K–12 share our statement or write their own. The statement is just the beginning of this discussion, and I’m hopeful we’ll hear a lot more from parent-teacher associations, teachers’ unions, and the media.
What can MLA members do to help put the statement into action?
MK: Use it as an instrument for asserting faculty governance at your institution. Ensure faculty representation on your campus’s IT and ed-tech steering committees, the ones who set policy and sign contracts with outside vendors. It’s not a glamorous form of professional service, but that’s where the decisions get made.
AM: Share the statement with your department, your AI task force, your IT department, and your administrators. Set aside ten minutes in a meeting to read and discuss it. If you feel pressure to redesign your pedagogy to circumvent AI browser agents, share the statement. Point to our argument that blocking AI from autocompleting assignments need not be a task for educators alone. We need cooperation from AI and ed-tech companies. Finally, share and comment on the statement or the issues related to it on social media and tag the companies.
Matthew Kirschenbaum is Commonwealth Professor of Artificial Intelligence and English at the University of Virginia. Anna Mills teaches writing at the College of Marin, California.