Kylie Grunsfeld, Contributing Writer
If you’re an English student like I am, or taking any class where writing is involved, you have probably listened to your professors talk about AI.
Most have a zero-tolerance policy for AI use in the classroom and on assignments.
It seems plain as day to me — using AI to help you with your written work is cheating. It may not be as severe as completely copying the work of someone else, but the act is not innocent.
Whether you use it to generate ideas or have it write the words in a style that feels “human,” you are reaping the negative effects of having something speak for you.
The morally questionable use of AI isn’t just limited to the classroom; last year’s novel “Shy Girl” by Mia Ballard is an excellent example of what happens when people suspect your writing is not entirely your own.
Ballard’s book has been alleged to be at least partially written by AI. There is no definitive proof to the allegations, but many sentences in her book bare a striking resemblance to the way a bot like ChatGPT tends to write.
If it is true, it’s not only lazy but disrespectful.
People are paying for your book. They are spending precious hours of their lives reading words that weren’t even written by you. Why should anyone waste time on literature written by a soulless, emotionless and water-guzzling piece of machinery?
Let me make my stance abundantly clear — I do not believe that writing in any way generated by AI, especially writing intended to be consumed by a large audience, is worth reading.
I also understand that most people at universities are not striving to be published authors. But if you write in any capacity, I urge you to reconsider your AI usage.
Imagination is a muscle. Creativity is like a bicep that needs to be flexed in order to be kept strong. If you get used to something else coming up with your ideas for you, those muscles will atrophy.
Imagination isn’t just an important thing to have if you’re in a creative field — it is an essential tool for all people. Imagination is how we problem-solve. It’s how we keep ourselves out of the watery depths of boredom. It’s how we set ourselves apart from others. It’s how we change things when they need to be changed.
An unimaginative society is one that is content living under current systems, regardless of how flawed they are. Without imagination, how could we conceive of a better world?
When you consistently use AI to come up with ideas for you, you are surrendering your imagination to a machine.
Coming up with a topic for a research paper, for example, is a valuable opportunity to flex those muscles. It may consume more time, may take trial and error, but what you end up with is a concept that is entirely yours.
I understand that things like ChatGPT are particularly useful when trying to get through busy work. It feels pointless to give thought to something that was not thought out when assigned.
I can agree that in cases like these, when you are just trying to get credit for something, AI is enticing. But I’m sure we are all familiar by now with the other negative impacts using AI creates, including its insatiable thirst for water and all sorts of other ethical issues.
People who seek to control us benefit from us being thoughtless. They want us to be, if not content, too unimaginative to think of any other way of life.
Using AI here and there is not going to kill you — at least not in the short term. But I urge you to get into the habit of generating your own ideas.
At the very least, give your support to real human writers. Maybe AI can be told to sound more human, but it will never write with the kind of soul you have.