Are we creating a world in which we aren't only choosing not to write out of convenience, but one in which we wouldn’t have the ability to write.
A tradeoff of convenience for diluted communication.
In the last few years, AI has become our professional and personal sidekick. So much so that when I am reading emails, articles, or texts even, I am questioning if it was just copy-pasted from an AI-generated text (don’t worry this is 100% me).
This trade-off between convenience and the dilution of authentic communication in our professional and personal worlds also extends into education, where students are increasingly using LLMs to generate essays and research. Although efficiency and ease-of-use might be great goals of AI in the workplace, they are antithetical to education and destroying the integrity of our greatest pillar of education — writing.
Not surprisingly a lot of students are using LLM’s to complete their homework with 1 in 3 college students using ChatGPT specifically to complete writing assignments.
How is using ai for writing assignments in school affecting learning?
The MIT Media Lab conducted research studying the effects of the usage of LLM’s during the writing process by comparing brain activity among students writing SAT essays on their own versus students using ChatGPT over the course of several months.
For the students using ChatGPT, Kosmyna writes: “The EEGs revealed low executive control and attentional engagement. And by their third essay, many of the writers simply gave the prompt to ChatGPT and had it do almost all of the work.” Over the course of the several months of the study, the students increasingly became lazier and would resort to just copy-pasting their essay.
According to the study, the students’ brain waves showed weaker alpha and theta brain waves which the researchers know correlates to deep memory processes. Many of these students when asked later, wouldn’t remember what they wrote about, making the case that using LLMs for writing assignment wouldn’t allow for students to actually learn or think critically.
We need to save writing
If we decide not to protect the tradition of writing as a central pillar of learning in the education system and allow for writing to be done in collaboration with LLM’s, I believe we are shaping our future generations to be worse critical thinkers and writers.
This wouldn’t be a world in which we are choosing not to write out of convenience, but one in which we wouldn’t have the ability to write. This would be a world written and contrived of LLM, unless we come up with solutions to save writing.
