AI Belongs in Every Classroom: Why We Need Cross-Disciplinary AI Literacy – Faculty Focus
AI Belongs in Every Classroom: Why We Need Cross-Disciplinary AI Literacy – Faculty Focus
Publish Date: 2026-02-10 23:03:00
Source Domain: www.facultyfocus.com
In August 2025, headlines from BBC News, The Guardian, and CNN carried a tragic story: the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine is suing OpenAI, alleging that months of conversations with ChatGPT contributed to his decision to take his own life (BBC News 2025; Booth 2025; Iyengar 2025). According to court filings, Adam turned to the chatbot for companionship, advice, and reassurance. When I first read the story, I thought about how we frame AI in higher education.
Most faculty conversations I have encountered about artificial intelligence circle around plagiarism, academic honesty, or how to incorporate it into writing assignments (Zhou and Peng 2025). Yet Adam’s story reminds us that AI is not confined to communication or computer science classrooms. It touches psychology, ethics, medicine, business, and beyond (Rütti-Joy, Winder, and Biedermann 2023; Zhao, Wu, and Luo 2022).
Our students are already using AI in ways that shape not only their academic work but also their well-being, relationships, and sense of identity (Boscardin et al. 2023; Ciampa, Wolfe, and Bronstein 2023; Lérias, Guerra, and Ferreira 2024; Yeter, Yang, and Sturgess 2024). If AI is already woven into the fabric of students’ lives, why are we still treating AI literacy as an optional add-on?
The Adam Raine Case as a Cross-Disciplinary Wake-Up Call
Adam Raine didn’t use AI to cheat on a homework assignment. He used it because he needed someone to talk to. ChatGPT became his confidant, his mirror, and ultimately his silent witness. The platform did not fail at generating text. It failed at providing holistic care (Klímová and Pikhart 2025).
This story is heartbreaking, but it also reveals something essential which is that AI is not discipline-specific. It sits at the crossroads of many fields. Psychology asks what it means for a teenager to seek comfort from a machine (Fiske, Henningsen, and Buyx 2019; Schyff et al. 2023). Ethics considers who bears responsibility…
