Writing is human, and flawed... but for how long?

One of my English teacher colleagues told me during break time last week that students are now using 'humaniser' bots to slightly mess up their AI written essays, to add in a reasonable amount of typos or grammatical mistakes, in order to make it seem like they feasibly could have written them and avoid teacher suspicion. I was impressed, but I wasn't at all surprised.

The educational landscape is a minefield at the moment.

We have colleagues who are embracing the future of AI, experimenting with each new Edu-AI tool which hits the market, those who are scaremongering late adopters with the haunting mantra, "you must adapt or be replaced!" and those who, like myself, are trying their best, but remain sceptical.

I know the drill. Use AI as a teaching assistant! Encourage students to refine their ideas using AI! Use it as a way to help scaffold learning rather than give them the answer! Some of these tools are truly excellent, and I am amazed at the possibilities for students and educators today. I am fascinated about how schools of the future will change beyond all recognition because of it.

However, I am noticing a worrying trend in classrooms I am visiting, and teachers I am speaking with, that students are using their imagination less and less, and are turning to AI for tasks that, a few years ago, students their age would not have had to think twice about. An example from my year 8 class yesterday: "Can you think of any synonyms for the word 'blue'?" They could not.

How many teenagers do you know who want to actually think about how to achieve something, rather than being served it up on a clinically clean, sickeningly sweet artificially intelligently produced platter? I know, not many. Especially those who are traditionally lower prior attaining students, who feel as though they are drowning in lessons and their co pilot or chat GPT tab is their only life preserver.

Think of the feeling of grappling with a hard task, and the relief of 'getting it' or producing something unique after a struggle. Learning. Many students are now no longer experiencing this, or experiencing it to a much lesser degree, because if they have their devices to hand in lessons, they don't have to.

I feel like a hypocrite writing this post, as I do use AI daily. I find it extremely useful in lots of my everyday teaching tasks. My conundrum is that, as an adult, I have already learned how to evaluate sources and critically challenge information based on its source and author because I have had the luxury of 'hard thinking', failures, successes and the pleasure of playing with words, in an academic and creative sense, for my whole life.

My question is, how do we utilise all of the amazing aspects of AI and also give students the unique pleasure, and pain, of seeing through a difficult cognitive process from start to finish?

When robots rule the earth, I hope that we can still retain the human capacity for empathy, communication, and creativity. I read a Guardian article this morning which really resonated with me. I will leave it here. Please let me know what you think, or what your experiences as educators have been, in the comments.

In this machine age we must hold on to imperfect writing. It is not flawed. It is human | Alex Reszelska | The Guardian