Issue II Final Layout (1)

12 | BACKPAGE the hourglass
Design and graphics by Cathy Wang ‘23 and Amara Okechukwu ‘24
Photography by Sophia Ran ‘23
ATTENTION STUDENTS:
AI IS INFILTRATING Y UR
ENGLISH CLASS
Value your days writing essays for class —they might be coming to an end.
LIGHTHOUSE WU ‘24
Staff Writer
Many students use online
programs such as
Grammarly, Khan Academy,
Noodletools, Desmos and
Notion to assist their schoolwork. But have
you ever imagined that there could come
a day when essays are entirely written by
technology?
Early in 2018, Chinese e-commerce
company Alibaba developed an artificial
intelligence (AI) tool capable of producing
20,000 words per second, to replace the
tedious work of writing product listings. In
the following years, similar tools appeared,
creating AI specialized in different kinds of
writing.
According to Forbes, “AI writing
programs use natural language processing
to create or improve written content based
on a set of instructions that you give them.”
Essentially, AI learns from available
databases of human speeches and writings
by finding patterns in these texts and
labeling them. The AI then imitates human
writing by utilizing the words and phrases
recorded from the database.
AI can write at virtually all levels—
including high-school and college. There
are countless programs that can generate
hundreds of words in seconds for students
to use.
For example, EssayBot writes, “Given
the title and prompt, EssayBot helps you
find inspirational sources, suggest and
paraphrase sentences, as well as generate
and complete sentences using AI.”
On Smodin, I typed in “Jane Eyre and
Rochester’s romance in the gothic setting,”
and the program provided me a complete
essay, with an introductory paragraph, a
plot summary, and specific analysis of
textual evidence, in seconds.
The AI even demonstrated “critical
thinking” ability. It asked, “What if
these heroines had been raised among
bitter feuding social classes who were
constantly at war with each other?” Then
it continued, “This constant conflict would
have desensitized them to romance —
making it impossible for them to develop
deep love later on in life despite any initial
appearances to the contrary—because
these initial appearances would be mere
figments of their overactive imagination!”
Would these AI programs be allowed
in the classroom?
AI websites claim to be only “a
solution to writer’s block” and “assist in
avoiding plagiarism.” A journalist from
Slate wrote, “Using an AI program is not
“plagiarism” in the traditional sense—
there’s no previous work for the student
to copy, and thus no original for teachers’
plagiarism detectors to catch.”
“
Even if there is
technically no
original source for a
plagiarism detector
to catch, the content
is still generated
from an original
source, which has
been plagiarized.
“
However, Dr. Sullivan, the Upper
School English Department Chair made it
Emilie Xie ‘24, Harper Hoffman ‘24, and Eesha Sharma ‘24 work
on an English paper in the Writing Center.
clear that Baldwin considers AI-generated
articles to be plagiarized, saying, “Even
if there is technically no original source
for a plagiarism detector to catch, the
content is still generated from an original
source, which has been plagiarized. Using
AI to write content for essays is cheating.
The Baldwin student handbook defines
plagiarism as ‘using somebody else’s work
or ideas’ as your own work. Baldwin’s
education goal is to assess critical thinking
and knowledge, and students shouldn’t be
passive learners.”
The Student Handbook explicitly
states, “You are plagiarizing when you use
any Internet or computer resource that has
been forbidden or that provides you with
work that is not your own (research papers
for sale, language translation websites,
etc.)”
Essentially, productive learning
requires students to cultivate their own
ideas, and using AI-generated articles is
not only considered cheating, but it also
prevents students from truly grasping the
material and developing key writing skills.
Even if students were allowed to
use these programs, it would be almost
impossible to use AI-generated essays
for class assignments simply because
AI tools are not yet good enough. A
teacher on EducationWeek said that “the
program lacks the depth, the voice, and the
authenticity” of human writing and that the
AI’s work “would not score remarkably
high if it had come from a student.”
Similarly, Forbes called the writing
AI programs “writing assistants,”
emphasizing that complicated human
writing is safe from being replaced by such
programs, for now. However, although AI
is not yet able to write complete, nuanced
academic essays, these programs do have
other potential uses that can help support
students without breaking school rules.
“
Although AI is not
yet able to write
complete, nuanced
academic essays,
these programs do
have other potential
uses that can help
support students
without breaking
school rules.
“
For example, Dr. Sullivan said, “If the
technology a student uses is not replacing
a student’s work, but rather helping to
catch small errors, it is not taking away
knowledge, and that is the usage allowed
in the classroom.” The ever-popular
Grammarly would be an example of such
technology.
Although Dr. Sullivan couldn’t say for
sure about the future, she did predict that
during the transition period when many
students will have access to advancing
AI technologies, it’s possible that the
school will “give fewer take-home essays
and more in-class assessments using the
lockdown browser.”
If this is the case, some may celebrate
the freedom from strict essay formats,
while others will surely mope that writing
excellent take-home essays may no longer
be an indicator of adequate learning skills.
What would you think?