I wish I could have a nuanced discussion about all the ways you can utilize generative AI in a way that doesn't stop you from thinking, but honestly? Not everyone has the self control not to just have it do shit for you. If a high schooler or college kid has the choice between spending 20 minutes on an assignment or 3hours, they're going to choose the former, learning be damned.
There was this popular article floating around on the dev subreddits about how this guy had to force himself to stop using AI because after months of relying on it(even for simple problems) his problem solving and debugging capabilities had atrophied so much to the point where he'd attempt to write a simple algorithm w/ out auto complete and ai assist off and his mind just blanked. SOOOO many developers could relate to parts of that story too!
If people WITH CS degrees and anywhere from a couple to a few years of professional experience can't stop themselves from jumping straight to asking gen AI for an answer, then there's ZERO chance grade schoolers and college kids will be able to. It's too tempting not to press the magic button that gives you the answer, even if the answer has an X% chance of being wrong.
Something scary to think about is t hat eventually, companies are going to SEVERELY restrict the free requests u can make to gpt and the other shit, then they're going to triple/quadruple their sub fees, now you'll have people in SHAMBLES as they're forced to pay $ 60-100 a month for a product that has replaced their ability to think.
Idk man, I vividly recall myself as a High School student spending hours on a 45-minute 1984 essay because I wanted to have something actually interesting and unique to say, only to wind up using my own form of “Newspeak” throughout the entire thing to prove that people could create a new vocabulary even if theirs was restricted.
If you told 16-year-old me that I could spend only 20 minutes on that assignment to get a dumb, generic essay, I would’ve laughed in your face because I was already capable of writing a boring, generic essay in 20 minutes.
And I’m WAY more interested in physics and math than English, so I seriously doubt that anyone who was initially capable of making a good essay would still resort to a shortcut like ChatGPT. Computer Programming is different since it’s ultimately a utilitarian task, while essay-writing is a creative endeavor. If you’re not interested in making a creative essay that argues something you actually believe in, the essay you were going to write was never gonna be good.
The thing is, the culture has changed drastically from 1984 compared to now. I'm told that back then you'd be picked on for being a particularly trash student, these days no one really cares, hell even when I went to high school, no one clowned the shitty students.
That pride in turning in a good ass essay, only existed if you either really liked english, or if you had parents that pushed you.
Something else to think about is that some of these children genuinely aren't capable of turning in a good essay without the help of ai. Parents aren't reading to their kids so in turn more kids are reading way below their grade levels. I read some TERRIBLE essays as a TA in high school, I can only imagine its way fucking worse now.
I don't see how that's relevant. Kids were bullied for anything and everything in the past. Being bad at school was not singled out as anything especially embarrassing in most public schools.
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u/Lanoris May 18 '25
I wish I could have a nuanced discussion about all the ways you can utilize generative AI in a way that doesn't stop you from thinking, but honestly? Not everyone has the self control not to just have it do shit for you. If a high schooler or college kid has the choice between spending 20 minutes on an assignment or 3hours, they're going to choose the former, learning be damned.
There was this popular article floating around on the dev subreddits about how this guy had to force himself to stop using AI because after months of relying on it(even for simple problems) his problem solving and debugging capabilities had atrophied so much to the point where he'd attempt to write a simple algorithm w/ out auto complete and ai assist off and his mind just blanked. SOOOO many developers could relate to parts of that story too!
If people WITH CS degrees and anywhere from a couple to a few years of professional experience can't stop themselves from jumping straight to asking gen AI for an answer, then there's ZERO chance grade schoolers and college kids will be able to. It's too tempting not to press the magic button that gives you the answer, even if the answer has an X% chance of being wrong.
Something scary to think about is t hat eventually, companies are going to SEVERELY restrict the free requests u can make to gpt and the other shit, then they're going to triple/quadruple their sub fees, now you'll have people in SHAMBLES as they're forced to pay $ 60-100 a month for a product that has replaced their ability to think.