In this new digital age, when we take steps into technological advancement, it’s usually pretty consistent that accepting and utilizing these new tools is always best. To be left in the dust is simply because of the people being too old-fashioned, disliking change. But for the first time I find myself staying put in the rise of ChatGPT, and generative AI. I believe having strong language and writing skills is imperative for everyone. Expressing and understanding text at a high level makes life and many if not all careers easier, more enriching, and helps you learn and absorb day-to-day life. Not to mention creative pursuits in writing or other hobbies. 

Parkway’s newly enforced AI policy brings up the question of students’ ability to write papers unaided. Many English teachers have expressed concern about the number of students who may begin to struggle or even fail their classes because of a stricter take on the use of AI as discussed in Raneem Hussein’s article ‘Adapting to AI’.

I won’t say I love writing essays, dissecting text, and reading classical literature, but the merit I gain from doing that in my classes is not disregarded. “Media Literacy” is a term often thrown around to talk about the growth of anti-intellectualism in today’s society, especially online. “Media Literacy” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media and to determine their accuracy or credibility.” This can relate largely to news, but also you gain these skills in English classes every day. 

I’m not trying to look down to people who use AI, I don’t want to talk about the ethical issues or environmental impact of AI, but I want to talk about you, and how your journey, especially in high school, and preparing for college, is being negatively affected by using AI in your English work. 

I’ve discussed this with my mom who is a fan of AI in small amounts, and found the reason she liked it is the streamlining of the process. Cutting corners in this way even leaves a bad taste in my mouth. All steps toward a finished product, be it a presentation, thesis, paper etc, build skills. Repetition of this work alone will streamline the process because you will be familiar with the steps. I worry about reliance on these systems because we are losing our own ability to do it. Writing and reading meaningfully are not something you can master quickly; we spend over a decade in schools learning the basics, then adding complexity over time till you’re writing many different kinds of papers all with different goals, and voices, and ideas you can express. The National Literacy Institute found that right now, over half of adults in the US have a 6th grade reading level or lower. I worry how this will change for the worse as AI becomes more sophisticated and harder to spot. But many more prolific readers and writers may still have a sense for it, and many people can feel the robotic quality and lack of voice in these generated texts. Not taking the skills you are being allotted now will backfire in college and in the workforce, if those are things you are interested in.

Students don’t have the energy or motivation to do a lot of this work; the school systems are letting a lot of us down in bigger ways that can be easily fixed. But something we must realize is the strongest tool we have is the ability to express and digest language. This is something you should not discredit schools for teaching, it is in everyone’s best interest to not need AI to understand something, and when you have something to say, your own words will be leaps and bounds ahead of whatever AI pieces together. The power in them is something we in society cannot give up to generative AI.