From Ted Chiang’s essay “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” (The New Yorker ). If I were teaching, I’d share this passage with my students:
As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.Related posts
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comments: 4
A good analogy
Love Ted Chiang!
I am Wayne in Brooklyn. I have been teaching 12th grade English for 34 years. My experiences with students point to some very dark predictions. While I love Chiang's analogy, too, he omits something most people haven't even considered: Gen Z and Gen Alpha (their even younger peers) won't care about art and artmaking in the same ways as older generations. These younger generations value digital and virtue "creations." There will come a time, sadly, when young people don't ever write creatively or handle physical art making tools. And my prediction is even bleaker: as a civilization old fashion fields such as connoisseurship, aesthetics, and conservation will fade away. These younger generations will know that A.I. made the "art" and it will not make any difference to them at all.
Thanks for sharing from your teaching, Wayne. I suspect that there's going to be tremendous buyer's remorse about AI, just as people are now regretting what phones have done to the ability to pay attention. I'm retired from teaching English, and I think almost every day about how I'd have to change my ways in light of AI.
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