Our family has supper together most nights. It’s something we started doing when the kids were little and we’ve stuck with it. Not everyone is there every night, but most evenings most of us sit down and share a meal without our screens in the way. From what I hear, we are the exception rather than the rule.
Anyway, at supper earlier this week one of my kids lamented that there are kids in school who are doing effectively 100% of their schoolwork with generative AI. I was surprised several times over.
- First, the kid he specifically mentioned is a smart kid and I was surprised he was one who would have given up his agency to a chatbot.
- Second, I was pleasantly surprised at how strongly my own son felt this was a serious mistake.
- Third, I was dismayed (though not totally surprised) to hear my other kids relay that this is the norm and not the exception.
From where they sit it feels like many kids are just “chatGPT’ing” their homework – and not just to produce an outline, gather information, or better understand the material, but just wholesale asking ChatGPT to do their homework and turning in the output as their own work.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve seen the same shortcuts applied in a professional setting in the name of efficiency. By this point I’m sure we’ve all been on the receiving end of copy/paste workslop that takes little time, thought, effort, or understanding to generate, and saddles the recipient with the burden of doing the mental work the sender declined to do. Apparently “chatGPT’ing” homework isn’t something that just the kids are doing.
Laziness and the abandonment of personal agency and responsibility masquerading as efficiency – that’s all this is. It’s bad for the sender and bad for the receiver.
Why this is a bad situation for the receiver should be pretty self-evident. If I wanted ChatGPT’s opinion I’d have asked it myself. But why is this bad for sender? Setting aside moral concerns, issues around taking responsibility for work you didn’t do, and so forth, I want to focus in on what I think is perhaps the greatest loss when you ChatGPT your literal or figurative homework: you get dumber.
Or more accurately, you miss out on the benefits of writing.
Writing down your ideas, in your own words, forces you to organize your thoughts. I know of no better way to learn about a subject than to write about it. When you write you see the holes in your own thinking. As you struggle to complete a sentence, and do the work to find your way, you form understanding. Writing quite literally makes your smarter.
Writing is magic. The ability to take a thought and record it in the form of words, whether physical or digital, is one of humanity’s crowning achievements. When I write with intention a little piece of me is captured and shared. Writing provides a powerful means to influence the world around you.
This isn’t an anti-AI rant. I use AI. I run a company that is trying to find ways to become more efficient and effective and a key way we’re doing that right now is leveraging AI deep inside our workflows, systems, and tools. AI systems are going to change our world in many ways over the next decade. However, one thing you’ll still find me doing a decade from now is writing down my thoughts. Writing is magic and I for one won’t be giving it up just because an AI can do it faster or better.