In the tenth grade I then laughed a classmate of mine told me that his whole essay The Great Gatsby Is written by Chatgpt. What would a robot have to say about a literary masterpiece that was written for a century before the robot was even conceived? At the time I didn't know what Chatgpt was; I had heard many references that swallow through our school corridors with increasing frequency, but had no first -hand experience with this mysterious technology, I considered it more a punchline for a joke. I had no idea at all where it was capable of.
Not long after my friend's confession he was caught. He received an ominous e -mail from the head of the English department and the director of the school; His first reaction was to try to rage me in his debacle. “Can I please say that you wrote it?” He begged me. I have the reputation to be a somewhat decent writer, one with a moral compass (hence his idea that my potential association would make things better somehow), and he thought this excuse would be tastier than the idea that a robot did his homework for him.
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Out of pure curiosity, I asked to read the essay that he feared would cause his professional downfall. My expectations were low, but when I read it, I was shocked. The pages of literary analysis for me were coherent and convincing – and certainly not written by my friend (he is a very smart student, but one without any interest in writing or literature).
A few days later, my curiosity still unfavorable, I opened the Chatgpt website, and on a whim I made an account (of course not with my school email). A guilty sensation rose through me while I did this. I felt that I was dealing with a kind of smuggling, some foreign technology from Aliens millions of kilometers away. I was overcome by a feeling of shame when I created a password. But it all happened so easily, and in the end I pushed through.
I tested the machine and asked to write a poem in the style of Lana del Rey. The results were not “summer sadness”, but I was thoroughly impressed by how quickly and convincingly the computer produced its facsimile. Then came the real moment of truth. I had already done my bio assignment for the next day and I was curious if Chatgpt could match my performance. Robot-free, the homework had brought me a good two hours. How long can it take the machine? I have stuck in my homework question (no types required) and inserted.
Within a few seconds, the software produced a long summary sign that was smart, but still would not work for the short answer format. Nevertheless, it had a lot of potential, and – I soon discovered – the small problem of its composition could be repaired par excellence. I just typed in a new missionary: change the answer into short sentences. Less than 10 seconds later I read a computer-derived, full-sentence answer that was not only usable, it was Actually Good.
I am a member of Gen Z; I grew up in a smart home with smartphones and a smart car. But nothing could have prepared me enough for what I had just seen. I could not start my head to wrap the seductive reality that – in less than a minute – a computer had produced a completed homework assignment, one that I had spent the past two hours; and the machine had done to least A job as good as I had done – without ever appearing for a single class.
I made a pact with myself – exactly there, despite some possible temptation – that I would never use chatgpt (even in a pinch), partly because I appreciate my writing above, almost all the other that I do (I certainly do not want any computer those words put in my mouth), and partly because I am not inherent cheater. Yet I could see why this new technology would be a seductive proposition for just about everyone who is human, perhaps because they are too tired to work after a long day of other things, or perhaps they just want an easy solution when they are confronted with an impossible deadline. Anyway, temptation is temptation.
And the statistics keep the fact that the chatgpt lure, especially for my generation, is very real – and it grows exponentially. According to a Pew research research, about one in four teenagers now admits that he used Chatgpt for their school work, a song that is doubled in just a year. Twenty -nine percent say it is ok to use chatgpt to solve math problems, and 18 percent say the same about its use to write essays. It is clear that this is not only a matter of temptation, but also of understanding the definition of cheating – in a new world where robots are closely involved in that process. Chatgpt is the easiest way out. It can do anything, from writing an essay to solving a comparison. But for teenagers who – by definition – still learn how to write and think, getting a computer to do our work for us is just about the worst to develop our brains.
My generation was one of the first to have screens before we could even read or write, and now AI is calling for our names. AI is especially vocal in the early hours of the morning when later that day should be a large paper or assignment. I know this from looking at my friends and classmates about Facetime when a deadline approaches with the coming morning. Certainly, children who are inclined to cheat, will always find a way to do it, whether robots exist or not. But now cheating is so much easier – and with expansion, so much more irresistible.
In addition to the moral crisis of more widespread cheating, the effects of chatgpt are harmful to education itself. That fact is clear even when chatgpt is used for legitimate purposes. Chatgpt can, for example, be useful for making notes or summarizing articles, but research shows that teenagers who use it that way do not absorb information as well as if they made the notes themselves. In a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, a group of high school students was divided in two before a math test: one group was allowed to use AI to study, and the other not. Although the AI group was allowed to use, it did much better on practice tests, the group without access to AI surpassed the AI group on the actual test – when AI was no longer available to both group.
The issue of compromised education is exacerbated the greater existential question of the future of my generation. From the front teen AI-usage I see a dark horizon in the distance, but are constantly getting closer. The future is a place where writing and thinking – if not completely ended as we know them – have certainly turned into a shadow of what they once were. And our collective identity is additional damage.
Learning to write is how we learn to define ourselves. Writing is not only an outlet for our thoughts, it is also a means with which we find out who we are-by self-expression, intentional reflection and the verbal exploration of ideas and perspectives. Literacy helps our ability to think and to interrogate the world around us. But AI threatens to undermine our individual voices and our authentic human thoughts, and replaces all of this with a computer -controlled generic brand of 'perfection'. To speak for ourselves, we have to think ourselves, and to think ourselves, we have to lay some distance between us and the computers that threaten to take away our thoughts. The alternative to that kind of action can be harmful to society itself.
As for my friend who was caught for his AI -Asay about The Great GatsbyHe was ultimately not deported or even suspended. Instead, he received a strict warning – and then forced to write the essay himself. He indicated and did a considerable work. Even if the computer hit the right points, my friend's essay turned out to have much more humanity. Errors, grammatical or analytical, can be something beautiful, especially at our age, when the emphasis needs to be more on learning than on purely performance.
The bigger story of Chatgpt promises a much less happy ending. To understand that, I don't have to look further my Gatsby Friend, who quickly returned to the use of chatgpt for his other assignments. And he is not alone; The number of people using it in my grade is only growing. This is a widespread problem that I don't claim to have a solution. But what I do know is: the technology at stake is quickly moving and we don't have much time to find out.
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