I'm skeptical that AI is rendering a generation of students illiterate. I think college is such a formative experience that a lot of folks treat it as sacred. And I think we underestimate the prevalence of casual cheating and the number of folks who were always there just to get a piece of paper.
May 7, 2025 14:55Which is not to say that AI tools are not problems for higher education. But I think there always have been and always will be students who are there to learn and students who are there to check off a box.
1/2 I agree with your larger point for sure. As an English teacher, AI is difficult esp bc before when we could just tell something was plagiarized, 96% of the time we'd uncover it through a quick Google search or plagiarism catcher. . . .
I'd even go a step further: If a work is that trivial that an AI can solve it, why bother a human with it? One of our profs did us allow every mean of aid during an exam. Including laptops and seat neighbours. His reasoning: When you are working, you can also ask for help at any time.
I mean the point of trivial work is practice. I do think there's a difference between an open-book test vs letting a computer do all the work for you. You're ultimately cheating yourself out of the education you're paying for, but then again that's nothing new.
The average college student is mostly interested in spending four years drinking and fucking and leaving with a piece of paper. That has been true for a very long time even at elite schools
