AI

The world of artificial intelligence is colliding far too often with my world.  First and foremost—and this is serious business—whoever is using AI to make cat videos just needs to stop.  I’m only bright enough to realize about halfway through the video that cats can’t stand on their hind legs that long.  I count on those videos to inspire me to keep going.  Stop turning them into the Velveeta of my mental charcuterie board.

Second, and just as important, is its presence in my professional life.  I don’t use AI when I write (does it seem like it?), but when it comes to helping students apply to college, AI is the Frankenstein of the high school science fair.  Give AI a sentence or two about what the student wants in their 600-word college essay, allow it to draw on other writing the student may have done, and it cranks out an essay that, to the casual observer, sounds just like something the student might say.  The student is happy, Mom and Dad are happy, and everyone is convinced this is the Gettysburg Address of college essays.  Harvard will soon send chocolates and roses, begging you to come, for free, of course.

Yes.  Well.

The issue of students getting, um, significant help with their essays is nothing new.  Before word processors, I had one student whose handwritten essays had all the lower-case i letters dotted with hearts—just like all the notes I got from his mother.  Once we got to the age of sending applications in online, students would ask me to review drafts of, er, their essays, including one where, as I recall, the student used the word epistemologically.  This was a great kid, but getting past “How are you?” was always a challenge for them whenever we met.  I almost asked them to spell epistemologically, but managed to find a way to convince them the essay needed a different direction.

This is the first reason everyone—not just high school seniors—need to be wary of AI.  It may put together a fascinating description of something, but if the piece’s intended audience is a veteran of many years of reading prose, they will read this and know one of two things:

1. AI wrote this, because it is just too plain.  College admissions officers are particularly good at this, since the only reason they ask for most essays is to get to know the person behind all those grades and test scores. If the writing goes down their literary palettes like warm water on a hot day, they’ll know a computer wrote it, and the student loses any advantage a real essay might have had.
2. AI didn’t write this, so you either don’t have any idea how to write from the heart, or you don’t know yourself all that well.  These are two big strikes in the college admissions process, when seeking employment, or just about anywhere else.

The second reason to worry about AI is the opportunities it denies us to learn.  The only way to get better at writing is to write, and show it to a teacher—not a “coach”—who will assist with issues of structure and expression.  The only way to learn how to make cats stand up is to be bad at it for a while, until you get the hang of video editing.  Choose not to make the most of those learning experiences, and you end up with a life of completing that has nothing to do with doing, or growing.

And that, my friends, does not compute.

Spam

My children came from the far side of the globe
A culture that honored
The Americans protecting their border
And by default
Honoring the American things brought with them.

One reason why
With advancements in tofu
Soy
Grass-fed beef
Cubed tin meat
Is still a must
In peninsular kitchens.
More genuine
I think
Than mere cultural appropriation
And still my desire
To hire a plane
Banner flying in the back
Eat More Kimchi.

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