AI and the Teaching of Writing: an inner dialogue

A former colleague had an assignment I like: “A political autobiography,” where students trace the arc of how their beliefs have changed over time.

In undergrad, I was assigned to write a few Socratic dialogues, channeling the voices of (mostly) thinkers we read in class and having them debate ideas.

I really enjoyed the latter and I always wanted to write the former, so I’m merging the two in the post that follows. The subject up for examination is “Artificial Intelligence in Education.” The participants in this not-quite Algonquin Roundtable are:

-Myself at age 19 (19).

-Myself from the previous decade where I was an enthusiastic supporter of transhumanism (THJ).

-Myself right now (ME).

ME: Thank you all for being here today inside my head. Please avail yourselves of beer, scotch, or coffee, depending upon your stage in life. Let me appraise you of the situation in college writing classrooms in the year 2025. 

Through Large Language Models (LLMs) made possible by artificial intelligence, a student can now input the requirements for a writing assignment and the AI app will compose a complete draft to spec. Sort of. It’s driving me nuts. Is this something you would do, Jon at 19?

19: Probably.

ME: I’m surprised, and yet I’m not. Why don’t you walk us through your “probably.”

19: At this point, I like to write. It comes easily to me. But I don’t really want to do anything with it.

ME: Yet.

19: Huh?

ME: Never mind. Continue.

19: Remember that I really don’t like being told what to read. 

ME: Your mind is not open yet, no.

19: Same goes for writing. If I’m not interested in the assigned subject, then it’s just one more thing I’ve got to do. So yeah. I’d probably have AI do it. But not if I could get me in trouble. You know how scared I really am about getting in trouble.

ME: Still am. But what if I told you that a) present AI detection methods are iffy at best, and b) there are apps that can render the final text detection-proof. 

19: Well all right! No harm, no foul. It’s an efficient way to take care of homework.

ME: Believe it or not, you will come to loathe the word “efficient” for several reasons, but for now I must ask why you’re going to college if you don’t care about learning anything.

19: Because education has never been about learning in my experience.

It’s about getting good grades. The public schools hammered at me to “get good grades.” Parents did much the same. In fact, Dad warned that I needed to “get good grades” so we could get our “good student discount” on auto insurance. What did all that tell me and my peers?

Education is purely transactional. It’s not about what you learn, but all about the grade you end up with at the end. Hell, I’ve already forgotten things from high school because I memorized them for a test, then let them go when it was over. You get the grade and you do it by any means necessary. It takes everything I have to get by in math and computer science, so I’d take any advantage I can get, including AI.

THJ: I’d like to jump in here.

ME: Go ahead, TransHuman Jon.

THJ: At age 19, we’re very interested in science and technology, but poor math skills will eventually make classes in those subjects feel like smashing our head against a brick wall. Writing comes far more naturally to us, so we’ll switch teams, and I think we already inwardly know that by 19.

19: WHAT??

ME: That’s another blog post entirely.

THJ: But doing better in math was never about “just working harder” as “they” told us. We have a condition called dyscalculia that was unheard of in rural Indiana in the late 20th century. For us to do well in math-driven subjects, it takes more than just “working hard.” Think of the benefits we would have had if AI could compensate for those genetic defects and allow us to participate in STEM arenas?

By my time, we know that plenty of students have trouble with writing in the same way we have trouble with math. Wouldn’t it be great if AI apps could help bring them up to baseline level so that they can engage and succeed?

ME: I like the concept of this kind of equity. My problem sits with the question of “is it really ability?” For example, let’s say I was allowed AI-driven compensations for my math struggles at age 19. Let’s further say that it did allow me entry into STEM work. Am I truly proficient in the tasks if I’m utterly dependent on AI tools? What happens when I don’t have access to them and something needs to be done?

THJ: Well, I don’t foresee a future where people won’t have access to them. AI will be embedded in basically every app on our phones, and eventually in wearables. Heck, once we have brain-computer interface chips, the world’s our oyster.

ME: Yes, TransHuman Jon. At your point, you’ve been reading a lot of Ray Kurzweil, and you’re giddy at the prospect of cybernetics “evolving” us past our human frailties. Well, I’m here to tell you there are a lot of problems with that line of thinking, not the least of which being that those prospects probably won’t pan out.

THJ: I’m happy to debate that with you at another time, but we’re getting off topic.

ME: True.

THJ: The question now is whether use of AI tools counts as “cheating” in accomplishing a task. Might I remind you that ever since our switchover to pursuing the written word, we’ve been utterly calculator dependent for any situation involving mathematics? And we’ve gotten by all right.

ME: Have we? We’ve screwed up plenty of times with calculators. Turns out if you don’t know basics such as order of operations, that tool really doesn’t help you. 

THJ: Then produce more extensive tools and apps.

ME: Even to the point of rendering writing an irrelevant skill?

THJ: Well, that does bother me. At this point, I’m only beginning to hear about such a notion. In terms of artificial intelligence, I’m musing on us constructing the ultimate human creation: an artificial brain that thinks faster than we can, sees things in data that we can’t see…or at least not without considerable effort, and can begin to offer solutions to big problems such as climate change. This AI might even develop consciousness. That would be amazing!

ME: If it hasn’t happened yet, one of your present colleagues will eventually explain why consciousness in an AI is unlikely to happen, and will remain the stuff of the science fiction novels 19 is reading.

19: They’re comic books!

ME: What we’re getting in reality is AI that circumvents the learning process for students and puts other people out of work. What’s more, the inner workings of these AIs are known only to a handful of tech bros like Elon Musk.

THJ: What’s wrong with Elon Musk?

ME: Give it a few years. Right now I’m reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

THJ: That old guy who thinks the internet is making us dumb? I don’t know about him, but the internet is making me smarter.

19: Yeah!

ME: Believe it or not, our opinions on this matter will change as we’ll notice disturbing changes in our own attention span and our ability to stick with long texts.

Like this one.

Anyway, Carr cites the account of how Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing changed when he was forced to move to a typewriter.

THJ: So? Technology always changes language. Case in point, you’re writing much more right now for this blog post because you’re typing in MS Word, and not scribbling with pen and paper.

ME: Exactly, but the writing AI is giving us is slop. That’s actually the term for it. Slop.

THJ: It won’t always be that way. AI will only get more sophisticated, and I still argue it may achieve consciousness.

ME: That’s cold comfort. Not the “consciousness” unlikelihood, but the notion that AI will eventually produce text that is truly passable to experts in language and rhetoric. When we change writing, we change our thinking. THJ, you brought up the calculator example. We have essentially outsourced all of our mathematical thinking to calculators. What happens when we, the collective human “we,” outsource even more of our thinking to AI by having it write entirely for us? And it’s not just losing the ability to think. It’s also the sidelining of something essential to the human experience, and that’s emotion.

19: Oh God. Tell me I don’t turn out to be a hippie.

THJ: Or worse. A romantic.

ME: I assure you I’m neither of those things. I still have my eyes wide open to the ugly realities of life, people, the universe, and everything else. And THJ, your advocation for a brain chip that allows one to shut off emotions and enter a Spock-like state remains an enviable one for this depressed man. However, all this leads me to recall, frankly, dumb ideas I once held just before reaching 19’s point in time. Data and “efficiency” aren’t always the best guides for making decisions. A few of the biggest choices humanity has made didn’t include those factors, but rather they were based on what was *right.* Our sense of right arises from, at least partly, our emotions. We learn these concepts from *checks notes* the humanities. Look at that pic at the top.

19: The one up there?

ME: That’s why I said “top,” yes. It’s an ad for an AI app that, as the effervescent marketing copy reads, turns “hard books” into “easy books.”

THJ: Hoo-boy. Didn’t see that coming.

ME: We never do. And before anyone says it, it is much different from Cliffnotes. Cliffnotes doesn’t masticate a text. THJ, we know that in a work like Great Gatsby, each word has been chosen, the construction of each sentence has been labored over, to convey a specific thought. And, often, to evoke a specific emotion. The reader is meant to chew over the text and work to find its meaning. It’s a workout for the brain. What this AI app does in the name of expediency and efficiency…

THJ: Is give us Brave New World.

ME: Right.  

THJ: I know. We’ve been heading towards it since Huxley wrote it in the 1930s.

ME: Barreling towards it, I’d say. And here’s where my thinking has diverged from yours, THJ. AI can deliver great benefits. But there are many dangers that ...

THJ: I’ve never argued otherwise.

ME: True. But the biggest concern for me now is what happens to human thought. Mathematics is thinking. If someone puts a long division problem in front of us and we don’t have a calculator, we’re screwed. You argue that’s why we have the technology, but I lament the fact that there’s a whole order of thinking we can’t engage in, at least not without great difficulty. At least we can write.

But how much longer will that be valued? Many view writing as basic communication, but we know it’s more than that. Much more. As Didion said, “I don’t even know what I think until I write it down.” Writing is thinking. It’s a means for coming to understand the world and its ideas. Carr closes out his book by saying, “…as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”  He gives the example from 2001 of astronaut David Bowman yanking out HAL’s circuitry while HAL says, “I can feel my mind going. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.” And now, officially, so am I. For the same reasons.

THJ: Ok, but you have to know that there is no stopping artificial intelligence. Barring a disaster that gives cause to pause, it will only accelerate and become utterly ubiquitous. It will be the preponderate technology of the century, and maybe even human history. You’re standing on the beach in front of a tidal wave. How are you going to surf it?

(beat)

ME: I don’t know.  

     

     

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Frozen

I long debated if I should write this.

It’s personal. It’s also political.

For seven years in the previous decade, I blogged daily. I wrote about…well…weird shit. Then on February 3rd of 2017 there came the “suspension of operations” of Saint Joseph’s College. On that day, my feelings towards my blogging subjects are best described by Pete Postlewaite from the movie “Brassed Off.” 

I paraphrase: “I thought it mattered. But does it bollocks? Not compared to how people matter.” 

After that, my frequency of blog posts turned spotty at best.

In recent weeks, I was reminded of that turning point in 2017. I admit I run my eyes over CNN’s Top 5 stories every morning. At one point, “UFOs” was listed as one of them, reporting on how the new Pentagon program has had a large volume of sightings submitted to it. “Who cares?” I thought. Quick on the heels of that news blurb, the Times ran an op-ed about what a great time this would be to contact alien life. “Ya gotta be kidding me,” I said.

Truth is, I just can’t think past how scared I am. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m biologically prone to anxiety, either, so the manifestations of these emotions often become physical as well as mental. It’s like an icy hand has reached into my chest and taken hold of me. Were it not for essential responsibilities to fulfill, I could wrap myself in bed and stare at a wall all saturnine for hours. I can’t even read, apart from, as previously mentioned, essential responsibilities. Even eating is optional. I’m Gregor Samsa trapped in bed.

What happens to my job if the Department of Education is, in practicality if not in fact, dissolved? What happens to my family if disability is cut? And we aren’t even the most vulnerable. Many more innocent people are at greater risk in the face of what’s coming.

Hell, what happens if we lose the National Weather Service? How did that prospect even become a thing?

Like I said, I long debated if I should write this. 

Then I realized I’m utterly unable to write anything else.

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Chaos

Chaos.

It is a quintessential attribute of life, the universe, and everything.

I don’t handle it very well, though. In fact, it’s my number one source of anxiety. I need to control things. That is not to say that I have dictatorial leanings, but rather, I mean that I need to plan, I need the comfort of routine, and I need a modicum of assurance that if I work hard enough and provide enough due diligence, I can keep myself out of harm’s way.

Life has taught me that ain’t always so.

As is usually the case, a series of unrelated experiences has me dwelling on the reality of chaos and my own unbridled anxiety.

A particularly brilliant student of mine wrote the following: “There, in life, are two instances where a man morphs and never returns to his previous state; the first, where he learns what fear is and finds what frightens him, and the second, where what he fears becomes him.”

Wow. So true. I’ve never been the same since learning what fear is.

Yesterday, I was reading a lit review in the Times about biographies of Joan Didion. It of course featured her famous quote: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” However, one writer argued that this isn’t the chipper boost for storytelling that might at first appear. Rather, it means we impose narratives onto our lives, regardless of accuracy, as “bulwark against chaos, against meaninglessness.” 

This then collided with a show I watched on Discovery for mindless diversion. It’s called, of all things, “Lost Monster Files.” In it, a bunch of hip-looking thirtysomethings chase after the case files of the late cryptozoologist, Ivan T. Sanderson. This particular episode featured a search for the legendary thunderbird. They found the nesting area of a large raptor, and scraped the place for DNA. It came back as being most likely an eagle’s nest, but there was something else unknown in the sample.

“So it doesn’t prove that it’s *not* a thunderbird,” the young woman on the show said.

Wow, I thought. She really needs this. For whatever reason, she really needs for there to be an as yet undiscovered species of massive bird, possibly a throwback to the paleo era, flying in the skies of America. She needs that narrative to give her order.

Or is it chaos? The discovery of a thunderbird would upend a good bit of our understanding of the natural world. That would be chaos.

There is an election anon. Many who believe that our current institutions have stopped working seek a similar “creative chaos” (as they see it) in tearing everything down to replace it with something else. What do I think?

I’ve voted. I’ve donated to my chosen candidate. And that is utterly all that I can do. I have no control over what comes next or what people will do. All I can do is try to manage my anxiety for next 24, 48, 72 hours, or God knows how long, because everything is completely out of my hands.

And that’s the part that never sits well with me. 

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1982: The summer of science fiction

A new book about science fiction dropped last Tuesday.

Obviously, I haven’t had time to read it, but I wanted to give my own riffs off its unique premise, especially in regard to how science fiction ideally asks questions about our current lives.

The book is The Future Was Now by Chris Nashawaty. It examines how somehow eight landmark science fiction films were all released in the summer of 1982: E.T., Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, The Thing, Tron, Road Warrior, Poltergeist, and Conan the Barbarian. I take great issue with those latter two films being classified as “science fiction” as they clearly aren’t, but maybe the writer addresses this in the book. As I said, I haven’t read it, but I do have thoughts on its subject matter.

By way of comparison to today, these are complicated films. They don’t explain what’s going on right away. You have to work for it, even just a little bit. There’s no vomiting of CGI onto the screen to make you feel you’re watching someone play a video game. I argue that even E.T. is complicated as it is not the “family-friendly, feel good romp” most people seem to remember. It’s downright terrifying and gut-wrenching in places.

Star Trek II is not only the best movie in its franchise, it truly is one of the best science fiction films of the 1980s. It speaks to us now through the character of Khan, his mind warped and narrowed by hatred. I swear Gene Roddenberry must have handed out copies of Moby-Dick to each of his writers as obsessive hatred and the pain it causes is a recurrent theme throughout all of Star Trek. The movie is also a philosophical meditation on loss, life, death, sacrifice, and the reality of the no-win situation we all must one day face.

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. Barely 11 years old, I read a review of this movie in Time magazine and knew I wanted to see it, but also knew my parents wouldn’t allow it. They were probably right. No, they were definitely right. The film opens with a vague explanation as to why civilization has disintegrated, and why “The Vermin Have Inherited the Earth” as is sprayed on the side of a truck, but we’re ultimately left guessing. Was it nuclear war? Environmental collapse? Exhaustion of resources? All the above? The answer to the question is, sadly, still strongly pertinent today. If anyone wonders why my generation is at home considering the end of all that is, this film is one good place to start.

While I’m no big fan of Tron, it reminds me of one of William Gibson’s inspirations for his groundbreaking novel, Neuromancer. In the early 1980s, he watched kids play games in arcades. They leaned in toward the screen, twisting their bodies in ways to suggest they were actually trying to physically place themselves in the game itself. Thus, the concept of “cyberspace” was born. In our own ways, we’re still trying to get into the machine. Think about it.

Blade Runner. Oh what can I say about this film that I haven’t already? It’s a masterpiece. It’s a true work of art. It’s my second favorite movie of all time (my first is Star Wars: A New Hope. Gotta “dance with who brung ya.”) This film covers nearly every question there is about what it means to be human. What does it mean when the machines in the film are more human than the humans? As AI inexorably advances, these questions grow all the more pertinent. 

The effect this film had on me is incalculable…that is once I was old enough to truly appreciate it. It’s also one of the reasons why a rainy future with ready-access to advanced technologies but a low standard of living comes as no surprise to me. If anyone is ever up for a viewing and discussion of Blade Runner, I’m certainly down for it.

In other news, the James Webb telescope is now going about one of its primary objectives: scan atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of possible life. Evidence is slowing growing that at least one planet has liquid water.

And where there’s water…

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AI and the "either/or" fallacy

Credit to the artist of the cartoon, whose name is Beancius if I’m reading it correctly.

“There are only two kinds of people when it comes to AI: Those who see it as the future, and Luddites.”

Someone in a college administration said that. They’re a “young gun,” and I remember being like them, excited about every single new technology arriving on the scene and what it can do with “data.” I still can be that way, and I can certainly understand the excitement for artificial intelligence.

But I also know an “either/or” logical fallacy when I see one. Closer scrutiny of the situation is more apt to bring someone to somewhere in the muddy middle of that kid’s assertion…as is so often the case.

See that cartoon? Upon close reading, I’m sure you’ll find it quite clever. It also encapsulates my greatest concern regarding AI, namely that we will come to entirely outsource our thinking. You ask for what you want and it gives it to you, and you take it without thinking. I see a similar behavior all the time with students and others who do a Google search on a given subject, grab the first three entries that bubble to the top, and think they have all they need to know. It will be tough to persuade me people won’t carry out the same behavior with AI only at scale.

Kurzweil’s new book, according reviews in the Times and The Economist anyway, utters the common refrain that AI will free us from mundane tasks. Cool. He goes on to say that millions of workers will be “liberated.”

That’s an odd, Orwellian term for “unemployment.”

Because he also predicts that in five years, AI will be able to write whole books and create art indistinguishable from human work. If so, just what will my family and I to do with all of my newfound “liberation?” Said “liberation” would, in fact, be a loss of self. Libertarians might argue, “Suck it up, buttercup. Market success means changing what you do.” Well, changing what I do is pretty much the same thing as changing who I am.

Ain’t so easy. I don’t think it will be easy for a lot of other people, either, even coders.

There are amazing things in the offing with AI. Medical treatments. Scientific discoveries. Anything that once required humans to take painstaking efforts to see patterns in data can be done in comparatively brief amounts of time. Good stuff. I just don’t think it makes one a “Luddite” to want to take a critical eye to what’s happening, and maybe pump the brakes for a moment.

At least we won’t ever have to worry about an AI being categorized as “alive,” or so a biologist argues from a mechanistic perspective. (see comments)

But hey. We’re getting an AI-generated Al Michaels for the upcoming Olympics. So we got that going for us.

Which is…nice?

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Cryptoterrestrials in the (WHA??) news!

I came across BIG news to me.

It requires a bit of set up, though.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve spent far too much time researching “the weird.” Not so much recently for various reasons, but it still captivates me, mostly in terms of cultural phenomena and collaborative narrative constructs. Fifteen years ago in my “travels,” I came across the name Mac Tonnies and his blog, Posthuman Blues. I dove deep into his posts, amazed at how much we had in common. He’s an English grad, a writer, a science fiction devotee, a Fortean, and a futurist! And he likes The Cure and The Smiths!

He also, quite sadly, was dead about a year before I knew of him. We would never converse. Just one of those strange twists of fate.

Last Friday though, I saw a post that pretty much rocked my world. Scholars from Harvard University and Montana Technical University published a paper putting forward the concept of “cryptoterrestrials.” As congressional hearings and high profile stories in outlets such as 60 Minutes have kept UFO (or UAP if you prefer) sightings in the zeitgeist, logical questions have once more circulated as to what the things are, and if they are indeed vehicles, do they have pilots? The cryptoterrestrials hypothesis posits that the occupants of the craft are not aliens from another planet, but perhaps beings from right here on Earth that fall into one of the following categories:

-The remains of an ancient, but technologically advanced, civilization.

-A breakaway civilization that branched off from humanity somewhere in the evolutionary process.

-Really bizarre, quasi-mystical entities more akin to angels than aliens.

In the first two cases, these beings would be living underground beneath remote sierras, or on the ocean floor (a place about which we know precious little).

Critically, the academic paper cites Mac Tonnies and his posthumously published book, Cryptoterrestrials. As he termed it, the book is “a meditation on indigenous humanoids and aliens among us.” The “nuts and bolts, spaceships from other planets” explanation really didn’t sit well with him, so Mac began searching for alternative approaches for those few bizarre cases that still defy easy explanation. As one might imagine, Cryptoterrestrials was an obscure book, published by a small publisher. Other than Amazon, you might have found a couple copies of it in the paranormal section of Barnes & Noble. But that slim volume was there first in many ways, even to the point of being cited in an academic paper making major news.

A few important caveats:

-The authors of the published paper acknowledged the lack of any conclusive evidence for cryptoterrestrials at this time. Instead, they tender their hypothesis in hopes of “consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.”

-Even Mac stood on the shoulders of giants. John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and Ivan T. Sanderson all wrote their own speculations along similar lines. That’s how research is done. One person builds on another’s work. Mac added to and expanded on the idea considerably.

-Don’t call me a “believer in cryptoterrestrials.” I’m not. We clear? Even Mac wasn’t sold on the idea and considered it a thought experiment. Like most skeptics, I see no evidence…yet. I confess the idea is tantalizing, but that’s not the point. That's not what has me excited. 

Mac was a super smart guy and a great writer. This current turn of events demonstrates that you never know how something someone has done might be influential later on, even long after they are gone.

I cannot help but feel an odd stirring of hope at that prospect. So…

Yes! Mac lives!

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