by Vanessa Huang
Following the boom in generative AI development in 2022 and 2023, the AI chatbot ChatGPT can now write essays to a surprisingly accurate standard, a development that has sent educators and columnists alike into a frenzy. Alarmists warn of the peril that lies ahead for existing assessment methods – their knee-jerk response is a further tightening of the reins, deploying AI-detection software and returning to closed-book examinations as a default. Techno-optimists, on the other hand, are happy to embrace AI as an educational tool that will simply form the next stage of the academic sector’s evolution.
What both of these perspectives miss is that the fertile ground for academic dishonesty by way of ChatGPT is of our own doing. Philosopher Douglas Yacek, invoking Agnes Callard’s theory of aspiration, characterises modern education as “one-dimensional” for its rigid focus on “preparation for the future.” School is framed as a stepping stone for university, just as university is a stepping stone for employment. Modern pedagogy accordingly hinges on assessment objectives, improving performance, and providing students with skills that will equip them for survival in the ‘real world.’ If you hit all the prescribed outcomes, you’ll have all the tools necessary for success, defined by “maximally lucrative and socially respected occupations,” as Yacek puts it.
Education has become an exercise in constantly looking ahead towards some indeterminate point for fulfilment, while the here and now is concerned with uniform outcomes that students must all strive towards. It’s no use setting off on an exciting quest for knowledge if you don’t know where you’ll go or what you’ll find; your time would be better spent racing towards the end goal you’ve been set ahead of time. If a tool like ChatGPT comes along and promises to get you from point A to point B with less time and effort, even better.
This is why claims that ChatGPT would facilitate the undoing of the very foundations of education seem particularly misguided. If anything, students are simply finding new ways to work within the established ethos of education where outcomes reign supreme – and it’s no wonder they’re choosing to sidestep the banality of working towards goals they’ve had imposed on them.
The current model of education robs students of agency and crushes any semblance of passion, all for the promise of success further down the line. Unless we learn to value education for its own sake and not as an intermediary step to academic or career progression, the allure of shortcuts and workarounds – like generative AI – will only grow increasingly difficult to resist.
