Artificial intelligence in academia is here, and it’s here to stay. It’s also in your news coverage, on your TV, narrating your books, in your telefon and cluttering up your inboxes — a tempting answer to the ever-increasing demands on our ability to communicate online. 

There is a right way — an ethical, healthy, productive way — to use AI to get what you want as a student trying to persuade a professor to budge on a slightly better grade, or take mercy on you and your classmates.

Here’s how students can approach professors with a well-written, empathetic, honest persuasion that won’t make our jobs more complicated and doesn’t reward grade-grubbing and perceived entitlement. Note: This is a guide for those over- and under-thinkers trapped in paralysis, hoping AI will save them from an awkward e-encounter of the academic kind.

AI empathy checks

Teachers and students have a lot in common. They’re both juggling competing deadlines and sometimes having tons of social interactions in a single day. 

AI chatbots like ChatGPT can offer an outside perspective on email interactions you might not have considered by asking the tool to put itself in your professor’s shoes, so you can run some approaches to the issue through them before settling on an action. 

Cool your jets

There’s controversy over whether AI chat tools can work as therapists, but venting to a bot is much better than firing off a frisky, uncivil email. 

When I acted as a student and chatted with Meta AI, pretending I wanted to rage email my professor, it offered measured advice and did not offer to help me draft the email. Meanwhile, ChatGPT immediately offered my manufactured student a draft of a potential email, which is exactly what you don’t want to do. 

Meta AI also wrote a pretty funny post title for the conversation:

Ask for an honest review of your assignments

Most of the emails I get from students are about grades and deadlines, which are, by extension, mostly about grades. Let an AI tool like Claude AI take a look at things like assignments, requirements and your work, along with your professor’s grade, for a gut check. 

I tried this with my work standing in for a student’s and got some valuable, honest feedback, which comes in handy for addressing issues of lost points with your professor. Every teacher I know highly values honesty and integrity, so students who are self-aware and upfront are seldom seen as a bother for inquiring after their scores.

Here’s what Claude told me about my assignment, what I should have included to get a better grade and how Claude itself would have graded me based on the assignment requirements:

With all that information in mind, you’ll have a better idea of what you could ask your professor for leniency on.