Could AI actually improve students' writing?
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Have we already reached paper-writing singularity? Technology doesn’t get scarier than this. But as a writer who frequently meets with high school AP English Language classes, I have a few suggestions.
1. Phone-free picture books.
Few students today read for pleasure. This seems to me a much bigger problem than the prospect of students using AI to write their papers for them. It’s impossible to become a good writer without being a reader. I wish every parent would create a phone-free hour in the evenings, separate from homework. Reluctant readers should be given comic books, graduating to graphic novels and eventually to all-print books.
I was a comics addict as a kid. My first concepts of synesthesia and metonymy came from a single panel in Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandoes. In it, the commandoes throw a cluster of grenades at a nest of Nazis. Private Percival “Pinky” Pinkerton, an umbrella-bearing Brit, quips, “Poetry in motion!” I was ten years old, and enthralled. From then on, I sought more writing like that. My children began with Archie comics and Calvin & Hobbes collections. Now grown, they’re passionate readers of books.
2. Critiquing.
What if students were told to use a bot to write the first draft? They’d have to know how to write an effective prompt—a skill that is likely to be a profession before they graduate. Then suppose they wrote critical notes on the manuscript, using the Review view in Word or comments in a pdf?
A final phase could be an actual rewrite. Yes, they might cheat on that version, but the interim critique phase would presumably make that more difficult.
To test this notion, I asked Chat GPT-3 to write a paragraph on the theology of the cook in Moby-Dick. A few seconds later, the AI produced this:
In Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, the character of the cook, Fleece, presents a unique theology that reflects his personal experiences and beliefs. Fleece is an African American former slave, and his theology is shaped by his understanding of the world as a harsh and unforgiving place, particularly for those who are marginalized and oppressed. Fleece sees God as a distant figure who is indifferent to the suffering of humanity, and he believes that people must rely on their own strength and ingenuity to survive in a world that is inherently hostile. At the same time, Fleece also expresses a deep sense of fatalism, believing that people's destinies are predetermined and that they have little control over their own lives. Overall, Fleece's theology reflects the complex interplay between faith, agency, and determinism in the context of slavery and oppression.
Any good reader of Moby-Dick would know that Melville wasn’t interested in Fleece’s enslavement except to build an ironic scene. Fleece, who speaks in an exaggerated minstrel dialect (“…by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!”), serves as an onboard theologian to make a powerful argument about sin. Ordered by the officers to deliver a sermon to the sharks that are eating a captured whale, Fleece responds with a speech that trumps the sermon in the book’s beginning: “You is sharks, sartin,” the cook says. “But if you gobern the shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned.”
In other words, Chat GPT produced a paragraph that barely earns a C in my imaginary class. I would litter it with questions: Define “unique theology” (it isn’t). Where is the evidence that Fleece is concerned for the “marginalized and oppressed”? Does Fleece ever mention God? (He doesn’t.) Does Fleece’s conclusion that the sharks won’t listen to his sermon count as “fatalism”? (Of course not.) “Faith, agency, and determinism” is a word salad with no sustaining meat.
3. Editing.
Every great writing teacher knows that good writing is rewriting. Rewriting someone else’s work—say, a literate bot—is editing. Having spent four decades as an editor, I’m prejudiced here. But I believe that the ability to critique and improve a work qualifies as the highest-level cognitive skill. While rewriting that Moby-Dick paragraph would be quite a chore, I believe it’s doable for a college-level scholar. It might have to happen in stages:
First, eliminate the invalid claims.
Second, define each key term.
Third, back each valid claim with quotations from the book.
Fourth, change the style to suit your own taste. Pay attention to rhythm as well as sense. Avoid cliches and fashionable terms.
4. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
Assign this book to every smart student. Have them do the rewriting exercises. Encourage downloading the audiobook version as well, just for sheer listening pleasure. George Saunders makes the best case for writing as an act of editing, and rewriting as a way of expressing the writer’s own taste.
I can imagine educators rolling their eyes at some of this. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do you make suggestions to parents for improving their kids’ reading? Is the idea of using AI to teach critical and rewriting skills at all practical? Does the emphasis on AP tests get in the way?
AI is here to stay, and it’s going to get better. Still, large language models merely troll Web archives to predict the next word in each sentence. The results can be astonishing, but by definition the writing is mediocre. I believe AI won’t replace high-level thinking for a long time to come.
