The decline of reading
As many commentators (I among them), have expressed fear for the threat of AI as a tool for students for completing papers and assignments in which they simply ask AI, receives responses within seconds, and then claims them as their own. As Horowitch writes, “What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If people become overreliant on AI to write for them, they could lose the capacity to interrogate or even develop their own views. These are quintessentially human capacities.”
As I have asked, What kind of person will a student be if he relies on AI to do his hard work and then claim it as his own? We all know the answer. For us in the culture-at-large, Horowitch writes, “If we gave those up [developing our own views],” the NYU philosopher Kwame Anthony Appia told me, “we’d stop being the kind of humans that we are. We’d be very different creatures.”
AI is already embedded in society, the fastest cultural transformation ever. It’s here to stay and to grow not knowing what awaits in a month, in a year, in a generation. Teachers meanwhile will be (perhaps already are) expected to detect papers that are AI and those that are not. I see this as a Herculean task, one for which teachers will need support. And just what, kind of support I cannot say.
We all are experiencing the challenge of detecting images and words, ones that are AI, ones that are not. It will only become more difficult. Perhaps impossible!“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard)
I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Blog or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com
