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This is my final dispatch for the semester, and I’m pleased to offer this concluding observation: We are not (yet) in an AI apocalypse!
Here’s what I mean by that:
- The more I use AI, the better I understand the amount of work it takes to transform AI-generated content into a high quality, college-level essay. I am, therefore, less worried about students offloading cognitive labor if and when they integrate AI into their writing process.
- If students don’t have the skills to write their own essay, they also don’t have the skills to evaluate and refine AI-generated content, so I’m increasingly confident that evaluating a piece of writing is still a reflection of the quality of a student’s work. AI slop is just slop and should be graded as such.
- Based on my experience and reports from other W101 instructors, most students appear to be submitting work that is largely if not entirely their own.
- Apocalyptic headlines like “Is the College Essay Obsolete?” are exaggerated. AI can generate pretty sentences; it cannot, without significant human refinement, communicate ideas effectively or construct a compelling, evidence-based argument (at least not yet). That refinement requires skills most students don’t yet possess, so writing instruction remains an important part of our curriculum.
- Phew! We remain relevant for a little while longer at least.