This was a phenomenal frame to look at AI writing through, and perhaps the first time that I've read commentary on this issue that has introduced any nuance to the matter that felt compelling to me. I am not a teacher but I was, until very recently, a student and a writing tutor, and I agree on principle that the garden is still worth considering despite it not being the wilderness. I do think that considering peer review involves a level of discernment that most student writers are not being taught or incentivized to employ or when using AI. At the same time, I can't help but be a little bit of a purist — AI has never given me the kind of personal, life-changing feedback that real people have. Much to think about! Thanks for the great essay!
Thanks, Mahnoor. For the record, I'm fighting my own purist biases and am still very much on team "real people are superior." But I'm increasingly convinced that there is a lot more to be learned in the messier middle than I initially thought would be the case.
Your wilderness/authentic frame, and the purity/corrupt binary, instantly made me think of Donna Haraway's Manifesto for Cyborgs. I appreciate this nuanced shift in thinking about AI. We all have to examine our hidden logic and desires.
I still think many of us could argue that to acquire the discernment that you identify as the better question than tech v. purity in fact requires much time away from AI. Not necessary alone in some monk's ascetic cell (they had community!). And we can debate whether the use of "grammar/spell check" and more active AI roles "counts." But still, like multiplication tables or foreign vocabulary or reiterations of a sentence, a student has to invest their own time and labor to learn 'the wisdom to know the difference.' We all have noted that the students lack the judgement that more senior people achieved without AI. Because it without AI, is the understanding.
Absolutely! That feels like the central challenge that AI is handing higher education (and perhaps education more broadly). If using AI can simultaneously short-circuit learning and create the appearance of learning, then how do we design work to ensure that students actually learn--and ensure we can reliably see that they are learning--in a world that increasingly feels saturated with AI? One answer is clearly to figure out how to get them to spend time away from AI doing the kinds of hard things that we've always asked students to do. The other, potentially, is to try to figure out how to design work that they do with LLMs that still cultivates the skills and capacities we're targeting. Both are surprisingly knotty problems.
This was a phenomenal frame to look at AI writing through, and perhaps the first time that I've read commentary on this issue that has introduced any nuance to the matter that felt compelling to me. I am not a teacher but I was, until very recently, a student and a writing tutor, and I agree on principle that the garden is still worth considering despite it not being the wilderness. I do think that considering peer review involves a level of discernment that most student writers are not being taught or incentivized to employ or when using AI. At the same time, I can't help but be a little bit of a purist — AI has never given me the kind of personal, life-changing feedback that real people have. Much to think about! Thanks for the great essay!
Thanks, Mahnoor. For the record, I'm fighting my own purist biases and am still very much on team "real people are superior." But I'm increasingly convinced that there is a lot more to be learned in the messier middle than I initially thought would be the case.
"Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable."
Your wilderness/authentic frame, and the purity/corrupt binary, instantly made me think of Donna Haraway's Manifesto for Cyborgs. I appreciate this nuanced shift in thinking about AI. We all have to examine our hidden logic and desires.
I still think many of us could argue that to acquire the discernment that you identify as the better question than tech v. purity in fact requires much time away from AI. Not necessary alone in some monk's ascetic cell (they had community!). And we can debate whether the use of "grammar/spell check" and more active AI roles "counts." But still, like multiplication tables or foreign vocabulary or reiterations of a sentence, a student has to invest their own time and labor to learn 'the wisdom to know the difference.' We all have noted that the students lack the judgement that more senior people achieved without AI. Because it without AI, is the understanding.
Absolutely! That feels like the central challenge that AI is handing higher education (and perhaps education more broadly). If using AI can simultaneously short-circuit learning and create the appearance of learning, then how do we design work to ensure that students actually learn--and ensure we can reliably see that they are learning--in a world that increasingly feels saturated with AI? One answer is clearly to figure out how to get them to spend time away from AI doing the kinds of hard things that we've always asked students to do. The other, potentially, is to try to figure out how to design work that they do with LLMs that still cultivates the skills and capacities we're targeting. Both are surprisingly knotty problems.