Maybe the end of humanity at the hands of AI (or whatever it is AI uses) will not be traumatic. We may not find ourselves in pitched battles with the monsters of Skynet. Maybe we won't shake with terror as The Forbin Project rains down hell on us. Perhaps we will slowly, passively, and quietly sink into obeisant, happy, languid, and docile obsolescence. Generations in the not-too-distant future, maybe even ours, will be content to let our army of personal bots direct our every thought and activity. AI may not have to stage a hostile takeover. We, as glassy-eyed automatons, may welcome our extinction by degrees, since it will ostensibly save us the time, trouble, and frustration of being human. We may not fulfill our potential, but we will be none the wiser for it. Who needs a robot wielding a rail gun when it is so much easier to let humanity devolve into passivity?
Mind you, I am not saying that somewhere there is an AI program scheming to seize control over the world and eventually eliminate all but the most remote pockets of human resistance ensconced in lean-tos somewhere in the Rockies. Well, maybe there is; we do live in an age of terrifying wonders. I am postulating that we might become so enamored of AI's newfound convenience that we cede increasing amounts of our autonomy and humanity to it.
A 10th-grade English teacher named Hannah Maria recently made the news for quitting her job. As many people do, she made her decision public on TikTok because that is what people do these days. The reason for her ire? AI, specifically ChatGPT, is destroying her students' language arts skills. And yes, there is a sense of grim irony about someone using a platform that utilizes AI and bots to carp about a system that uses AI and bots. Still, she says technology is "ruining literacy."
From the New York Post:
“A lot of these kids don’t know how to read because they’ve had things read to them or they can click a button and have things read out loud to them in seconds,” she griped. “Their attention spans are weaning because everything is high-stimulation, and they can just scroll [away from something] in less than a minute. They can’t sit still for very long.”
She added that her students "throw tantrums" when asked to write a paragraph or two with a pen, since they would rather hand the task over to ChatGPT. She added, “They don’t care about making a difference in the world. They don’t care about [writing] a resume or cover letter because ChatGPT will do it for them. We’re at the point where I don’t really have faith in some of these kids that I teach.”
Hannah Maria is not alone in her observation. In an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Clay Shirky, an administrator for New York University, wonders aloud if AI, while implemented to augment education, may be on its way to eliminating it. Part of Shirky's job is to help faculty members adapt to using digital tools. Shirky notes that while AI may have been implemented as a tool for students, there is no guarantee that it will not become an academic cure-all for every assignment.
Shirky writes:
Earlier this semester, an NYU professor told me how he had AI-proofed his assignments, only to have the students complain that the work was too hard. When he told them those were standard assignments, just worded so current AI would fail to answer them, they said he was interfering with their “learning styles.” A student asked for an extension on the grounds that ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due. Another said, about work on a problem set, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?” And another, when asked about their largely AI-written work, replied, “Everyone is doing it.” Those are stories from a 15-minute conversation with a single professor.
Shirky recounts reports of students feeling that AI had made them lazier and sapped their creativity. Some had reached the point that even an AI summary was too complex to read. One college student lamented that he could no longer complete his assignments without using ChatGPT and would graduate knowing nothing about his major. But Shirky adds:
Instead of a spectrum, uses of AI are independent options. A student can take an engaged approach to one assignment, a lazy approach on another, and a mix of engaged and lazy on a third. Good uses of AI do not automatically dissuade students from also adopting bad ones; an instructor can introduce AI for essay feedback or test prep without that stopping their student from also using it to write most of their assignments.
As Shirky sees it, the task at hand is to convince students to utilize AI as a tool, while not becoming dependent on it for writing everything from an analysis of "Paradise Lost" to "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."
The piece is worth reading for the story of the case of Richard A. Richard A. was a student with a learning disability who was allowed to use ChatGPT in school. The upshot is that the young man graduated with a 3.4 GPA and couldn't read.
It isn't that the world needs more high schoolers writing reports about the Industrial Revolution or the themes of "To Kill a Mockingbird." We have been, or were, awash in those for ages. The point is that in researching the Industrial Revolution, or reading "To Kill a Mockingbird," and putting observations and facts to paper or screen, the student exercises their investigative and critical thinking skills, and enhances their ability to communicate. And they learn something of history and at least expose themselves to literature. The process is arguably equal to or more important than the outcome in some cases.
If we allow AI to replace that process, we could eventually become less relevant than the skeletons that grace the opening scenes of Disney World's "Pirates of the Caribbean."* If that is the case, then the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the bots, but in ourselves.
* Or Disneyland. Pick your poison.
