Is there anything that makes my heart sink more nowadays than reading or hearing something followed by “used ChatGPT” or “used AI”?

I’m sure I could find a few, but this one is just really bothering me lately.

I’m about to get up on my soap box, bear with me. 

While I’ve been annoyed by the abuse of AI in the academic world (by both students and teachers), the little house of straw just keeps crumbling down because AI is taking over in so many destructive ways. 

I had an account that I follow on Instagram pointing out how she was so annoyed by the AI slop music in all the Korean cafes that she went to. I thought, oh surely not, I haven’t experienced that where I am at. But lo and behold, I’ve gone to at least three cafes in the past few weeks where my phone couldn’t identify the artist and the English-only, nonsensical lyrics were a dead give away that they weren’t created by any human. 

And speaking of Instagram, I’ve been seeing several of my followed accounts suddenly start having paragraph-long descriptions of what is going on in the post – lacking any of the original creator’s personality or character in the writing.

In any search bar on the web lately, I get an AI summary or option to have an AI summary provided. 

There are authors speed-publishing books using AI – which makes me want to never read a book published after, say, 2020. Which just sucks for those genuine authors who are seeking to publish their own work in this day and age (I count myself amongst their numbers).

There’s even been a scandal of a newspaper, Singapore Esquire, publishing an “interview” with a chatbot-generated Mackenyu (the actor playing Zoro in Netflix’s live action One Piece). They even included a question and answer about how this AI Mackenyu felt about following in his deceased father’s footsteps. Disgusting. 

Then in my day to day work, I can’t tell you how discouraged I’ve been to see so many responses to different surveys or emails and been told – “oh yeah, I summarized it all in chatgpt and asked it for an answer” or “I typed your question into such and such AI platform  and here’s what it said.” Even with some rather sensitive issues that we’ve been dealing with as a school, I got told that multiple perspectives are put into Chatgpt to help generate a response. 

I can’t even get your genuine response before you ask an AI chatbot? You can’t think through what you actually believe before you turn to a computer? I feel like I have to ask multiple questions now when I get a response, like “is that actually what you believe or did Chatgpt tell you that?”

And then of course with my students, we have to jump through so many hoops – handwritten essays and samples, interview style questions after getting a suspiciously written essay, gathering multiple teachers’ input – to determine if a kid actually wrote an essay.  

The students also get frustrated with teachers who use AI to generate study guides or who run their papers and work through AI to grade it for them. Much like my previous example, it is really defeating for good students to try hard and then not get genuine feedback from their teachers. It’s so discouraging to realize that someone doesn’t even put in the effort to read your work and grade it – why bother writing what someone can’t be bothered to genuinely read and engage with? I’d rather read, hear, see one poorly written genuine,  heartfelt message than one more polished inhumane chat-generated sentence.

Here are the problems that I keep seeing:

By delegating everything to AI, you rob yourself of the opportunity to teach yourself that skill. I’ve spent years cultivating my writing voice – editing down my flowery language, learning what makes sentences pop, getting feedback from others, and adjusting my words to accommodate what is genuinely helpful advice and discarding that which goes against my particular style. 

What students – and even adults – miss out on when they immediately go to AI to help generate ideas or correct their own is wrestling with and developing their own ideas. Because how do you know that your thoughts are coming through and not just what AI told you about the topic?

How do you know that the information you are getting is accurate? (I won’t go into a whole dialogue about hallucinations but they are a problem). Plus, regardless of how you construct your prompt, AI does have a bias and most people using it are too lazy to really prompt it to correct any bias. 

And I just keep coming back to the idea that I don’t want to read what you can’t even be bothered to think through and type yourself. I don’t want to rob my brain of the opportunity to struggle and grow. Yes, it takes time, but why are we so afraid to put in any effort to wrestle with what we think and write?

Plus I think of the spiritual component of this, because of course there is always a spiritual component. Why should we care about words and the formation of language?

Because God cares. He literally calls Himself The Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, emphasis mine). God created words, He brings life through His Word, He spoke the world into being using words.

There is a fundamental connection between creation and the use of words. As creatures made in His image, our words have an impact too. They can build (and tear down), they can create (and destroy), they have meaning. 

We are created to learn and grow. We are meant to study and wrestle with ideas. 2 Timothy 2:15 urges us to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  How do we do that? With thoughtful study, effort, and struggle. Don’t shortchange your thinking to a robot. Don’t rob yourself of the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the Living Word and with your fellow creatures made in His image. 

Engage. Wrestle. Think. 

I promise it is worth it.