A semi-journalistic observation (perhaps more aptly called a position piece) of the degenerative condition our education is experiencing as a result of AI.
Lydia Griffin (Class of 2026) is pursing majors in English and Philosophy and a minor in Theology.
I have submitted a semi-journalistic observation (perhaps more accurately called a position piece) on the degenerative condition our education is experiencing as a result of AI. The Cornerstone Program recently hosted Dr. Montás as a distinguished lecturer, and his insight on the necessity of Great Books in an age of academic and political uncertainty was enlightening, to say the least. In the aftermath of his lecture, alongside witnessing my peers' increasing use of AI, I felt compelled to write a piece that thoroughly articulated the concern I have with this AI affinity, as well as highlighted the hope Dr. Montás brilliantly conveyed in his lecture.
Should one wish to observe the destitute status of our current education system, he or she could merely glance at the written work of every third or so student at any given university.*
Bad writing is perhaps the exemplar of this progressive degeneration.
I take care to immediately insert here that by "bad writing" I do not mean writing in poor form, structure, or content.
It has been often proclaimed, in an attempt to bolster student confidence, that "bad writing is better than no writing." I grant this with one significant alteration: that bad writing simply does not exist. I mean this quite literally. The philosophical doctrine of the privation theory of evil suggests that the bad is merely a lack of the good. Quite like this, I put forth the claim that bad writing is merely the absence of real writing.
Should this assumption be granted, bad writing, then, becomes AI generated writing, as it comes from nothing, with no individual human consideration. It is an amalgamation of bits of information that have been deemed adequate for the student’s submitted prompt—pieces of precoded language mashed together to form the appearance of a completely unique, intelligent human response.
This inauthenticity should be regarded, in no small way, as a total inversion of the values an education should uphold.
I risk quoting here perhaps one of the most unquotable authors in the recent near-3,000 years (insofar as his dialogues must be read in their entirety to truly grasp the enormity of their value) to regurgitate what may be one of the most important foundations of education—fronted by Socrates, naturally, in Plato’s Apology: "An unexamined life is not worth living."
How silly, one might think, that I posit this as though we are not naturally deeply self-concerned individuals, constantly thinking of our lives, our advantages, and our value in the grander community.
I will grant this egoism most readily as an inborn function of the human condition. And yet we introspect, I’ve witnessed, extraordinarily poorly.
We look upon our lives so constantly, so fixedly, that we have completely blinded ourselves. This fracturing of appearance and reality is an existential discontinuity that exactly mirrors the threat that AI generated writing poses to legitimate writing: it has given us the appearance of self-examination where it is most absent.
Written word, it seems, has become one sacrifice among many in this reinvigorated movement set on abolishing self-value. Students have flocked to it most determinedly in a radical attempt to rid themselves of what they see as a disposable part of education and, thus, themselves.
Indeed, two Tuesdays previous to the one I am composing this on, as I was helping a friend with an academic paper, he asked me, quite plainly, “how do I make this sound better?” I hid very well my unease with the question, though it was perhaps this article’s very motive. He had asked me not "how do I improve" nor "how should I better approach this." No, this friend, among many, had asked me: how do I appear as though I have intellectualized this without exerting more than the barest necessary effort.
This mindset is exactly that which encourages students to plug their papers into an AI generator so that it may mangle their writing to conform to educational standards. Or worse still, merely input an idea or prompt and have it generated entirely for them.
Students, then, do not come to understand how these aforementioned educational standards supplement their learning (though, I grant here that there are some standards that do not do so—though, those who use AI would not be able to distinguish the helpful from the harmful regardless), they merely learn how to plug in a prompt and replicate the language necessary to achieving an adequate grade.
In this way, language becomes entirely stripped of its meaning.
I must recall here my recent attendance of a lecture by one Roosevelt Montás, Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University and author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, to perhaps offer some small measure of hope, a potential reconciliation of this fallen state of our education.
Written word, it seems, has become one sacrifice among many in this reinvigorated movement set on abolishing self-value. Students have flocked to it most determinedly in a radical attempt to rid themselves of what they see as a disposable part of education and, thus, themselves.
Dr. Montás began his lecture with the pointed observation that our political culture is changing in a way that reveals existential destabilization; the very instability that I’ve underscored to this point. The turmoil we see in our politics, he continues, is a symptom of this fundamental shift, a shift likewise seen in the ongoing penetration of AI. Dr. Montás paused here to note his concern with AI in that it “allows students who can merely recognize sophisticated writing to replicate it,” a fear I lamented as a consequence of the regressive mindset of many students. He wrapped his introduction by pointing out, as a similar third concern, that there are people progressively attempting to tap into the genetic underpinnings of molecular life, something that, alongside AI and the current political state, must prompt us to question “what it really means to be human, what it means to be a part of the natural world, and what about humanity stays the same throughout all these changes.”
Dr. Montás posited that, by reading the great books, human beings are able to grapple with existential questions such as these, particularly students. In this way, perhaps, we can ‘examine’ ourselves, as Socrates suggests we must, and reconcile the damage done by this popular student mindset. Dr. Montás continued, then, that it is only through the observance of a world that no longer exists, through the investigation of archaic minds such as Homer and Plato and Dante, that something fundamental about the human condition can be genuinely revealed to us. Through this contact with “alien minds,” as Dr. Montás termed them, an individual is able to think the thoughts of Plato through his literature and see his or her own humanity illuminated and deepened.
As an important aside, Dr. Montás described how Dante’s Divine Comedy has been, multiple times, deemed “unfit” for him by progressive arguments on behalf of the marginalized. These individuals attempt to defend him by limiting his consumption of literature to that which specifically concerns his status as a minority. These attempts at empowering him, though, he asserted, actually end up denying him an expansive set of tools for development on the limiting basis of his religion, culture, and ethnicity. The reason why Dante is important is not because he represents the marginalized in some way; instead, Dante is important because he is capable of illuminating human nature. In this way, books like these ground us in something about being human that extends across individuality. In this way, the great books are most consequential to any given person’s development in life, particularly of mindset, regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity, political opinion, or status.
The categorization that Dr. Montás suggested by the indicated progressives (and I, like him, mean this term apolitically) is a reflection of the total separation of value that is occurring in our educational system.
By this I mean, the separation of his status as a minority from his status as a human being with a shared nature reflects exactly the separation of self-value from academics encouraged by AI that propagates a degenerative mindset in students.
Here, I pause to note that, though I have used Dr. Montás’s lecture as supplemental to the position I front in this article, and the concerns expressed in his lecture suggest that he may agree with me in some ways, I do not wish to claim that he aligns entirely or would support my observations and analyses.
Regardless, his lecture contextualizes a lot of the claims I’ve submitted thus far and suggests that there is something sorely lacking in our current understanding of where we derive value from.
I suggest here that human self expression is the mode most adequate to contain truth. It is completely unique to human beings—it is a unity of language and meaning: of the universals that qualify meaning and the matter with which humans cognize that meaning.
Language, therefore, is a radical attempt to access that unity in a way that only human beings are able to interact with meaning. Our written creation, then, embodies that connection, that access.
Why are we so determined to do away with that?
When we submit ourselves to AI in this way, we are ridding ourselves of an irreplicable capacity of communication that only we as humans have, and it is a regression of immeasurable consequence to the "examination of life" our education should prompt us in.
This concern of authenticity and value has been expressed by many before, particularly with the dramatic influx of social media platforms and participation over the recent two decades.
Now, I am not suggesting the total abolition of social media. That would be entirely hypocritical of me, given that I use such platforms.
I enjoy them, even…right up until I get scathingly jealous at a particularly flawless photo. Even still, these perfectly curated pictures, though largely inauthentic, still contain a small glimpse of the person who posts them, however small it may be. I grant that that small glimpse of reality saves it from total destitution, and allows for human connection and the expression of self-value, if minimally.
AI, on the other hand, has no such saving grace.
It is empty, with a total absence of humanity and corporeal consideration, and, thus, is the antithesis of what it means to actually learn, to actually experience and "examine" life.
In this way, AI is not an advancement; it is a regression of the highest degree.
Even still, I would be likewise remiss to suggest an abolition of all AI use, as it is simply not achievable in our current state.
I merely wish to illustrate the problem, front a potential solution, and invite the reader to carefully consider where they place the value in their education. The answer matters. If it does not to you, I hope that you find Dante, Plato, and Homer (just to note a few) as thrilling as I have.
Now, what if I interrupted here, at the very conclusion of my work, to admit to you that I wrote this with AI or that I allowed ChatGPT to edit my piece?
Would you feel betrayed?
I certainly would.
I hope, all things considered, that you would feel so too.
*This claim is merely an estimation based on the vague data offered on AI usage across multiple websites.
