By Lew Ludwig

Image generated using ChatGPT with prompts created by ChatGPT.

Three weeks into the semester, a hand went up in my class. It wasn't a question about the material. It was a question about me. "How closely are you reading the notes AI writes for you?" There was an edge in it, the kind of edge that says I already know the answer . Theo did. It had been one of those weeks, and I told the class the truth: not as closely as I should. I had looked at the big blocks of ideas, checked the formatting, and hit print.

Back in March I shared how I was rebuilding my linear algebra notes with AI as co-author. Not notes for me. Notes for students, in place of a textbook. There is no book to buy. Students read a set of notes before class, work through the examples, try the practice problems, and we spend class time on what gave them trouble. That was a course I'd taught over ten times. I knew where every student would stumble before they did.…