Editorial

 

I left my English classroom over a decade ago, but long before that I was feeling the effects of this new-fangled internet. I had assigned yet another writing piece for one of my International Baccalaureate classes. As a teacher you become familiar with your students’ writing style and abilities and what sounds false. I discovered that even back then I only needed to type a suspicious phrase into Google and I could find the true source. Sure enough, 75% of one girl’s submission was not her own. And she wasn’t the first to think that moving words from someone else’s writing into her own was perfectly fine.

 

          I can’t even imagine trying to combat this attitude in today’s world.

 

“The End of the Essay”, an article by Hija Hsu in my latest issue of The New Yorker gave me one more reason to embrace my retirement from teaching. It’s about the effect of AI on college writing.

          For example, one student interviewed needed to write a paper for art-history class. His solution was to photograph a museum’s exhibition, with each painting’s description for gallery goers, and then he uploaded everything to an AI program, telling it to produce a paper. After telling AI to tailor it to better answer the professor’s assignment, he submitted the final version to class and received an A-.

 

          In the future, will anyone be able to read something, think critically about it, and then write an opinion on it? Will we all have forgotten how to think?

          This morning, I picked up my local paper and found an article about a Massachusetts professional development course that some high school teachers are taking this summer.

          This $135,000 program is “designed to provide high school educators with the tools, knowledge and network to bring artificial intelligence into their classrooms.”

          Know thine enemy is one thing but here’s my question – Is this a Trojan horse? Shouldn’t we be trying harder to keep artificial intelligence out of our classrooms?