January 30, 2023–The recent concern over chatGPT and other AIs that can write student papers makes me want to put in my two cents. As an English prof at BC, I’m a bit puzzled by the almost-panicked response by a lot of academics at the thought that students might have an AI write their papers for them. The department workshops, meetings, and quickly written policies seem to me to be a touch ingenuous, and overreactions.
For instance, I wrote my older brother’s senior paper for him in high school. I think he paid me $50, but I don’t think he/I got that good of a grade. I assume I’m not special, and that cheating has been going on since Day One in education. I’m sure some of Plato’s students cribbed answers from local sources.
But what if our concern is really about ownership and thus about capitalism?
The idea that we must own our own work of course has merit—individual effort is important. But maybe we’ve gone so far in the direction of thinking that individual effort is nothing but personal effort that we’ve forgotten the basic notion that learning is always accomplished by imitating.
Furthermore, trying to win the race against AI paper writers is a losing proposition—an arms’ race in which human teachers and admin people come up with detectors for AI, only to have the all-too-human programmers on the other end come up with ways of eluding the detectors, ad infinitum.
I propose instead we teachers forego playing superego/police state to our already over-surveilled students. Do we really think that the small minority of students who have cheated in the past will suddenly balloon because of an AI helper? I’m more inclined to believe my students, and trust them to do what most of them have always done: convey that they actually like to work. Most of them do, once they see that work doesn’t have to be drudgery. All that takes is a little faculty imagination when composing assignments for students.
In addition, the three-alarm response is, of course, the fear that we won’t be able to tell a student’s work from that of an AI. But isn’t it we teachers who are supposed to be able to hear our students’ voices? A speaking voice is the outward expression of a writing voice. If we can’t tell the difference, maybe the problem is with us, and we need to lend a better ear to the students, instead of freaking out that they’ll all now cheat because they can.
#breakingnews: They always could. Most of them didn’t.