Brian Walker

Contributing Writer

There has been an ongoing kerfuffle between Gen-Z and Millennials that has been taking place across social media for some months now, as it pertains to their scholastic experience and the readily available resources to assist with writing academic papers. It appears that Gen-Z cannot fathom that prior to their existence, college students were unable to write a 10-page paper without the assistance of AI.

Well, as someone adjacent to that era, I’m here to tell you that it was possible; it was far from easy, and it was done with limited resources.

Before you [Gen Z] inherited a technological world where any and everything you need rests in the palm of your hand, there was an analog world that many had to navigate. College students were confined to the library, for hours, note-taking and checking out additional reading materials outside of our (already purchased) textbooks. There was this little thing called an encyclopedia and another thing called the Dewey Decimal Classification they had to learn; that was a learning curve in itself. Not to mention, they didn’t all have laptops at their disposal, so they sat in a computer lab for more endless hours writing their first (and sometimes second or third) draft by hand before typing up the final draft and formatting it.

So yes, they can write papers better and faster than the average college student today. Be that as it may, if you catch them side-eyeing your use of AI, it’s not that they have an issue with your shortcuts; it’s just that they understand the perils that lie ahead as AI keeps advancing.

Did they cheat on assignments? Perhaps. But the question here is, is AI cheating? Well, that depends…

When it comes to AI, things have gotten convoluted as to what constitutes cheating and what’s merely a tool used for assistance. Over generations, cheating has evolved drastically. There’s no such thing as cheat sheets in a society where Meta glasses exist, in addition to our cellular devices and the myriad of duplicitous things they can do without a hint of detection.

If you noticed, at the beginning of each semester and course, we’re instructed to review our syllabus as a class regarding the school’s policy. The highlighted area always harps on maintaining academic integrity, i.e., the prohibited use of AI and audio and video recording.

So, what is considered academic dishonesty? I venture to guess when AI does the assignment for you. When it teeters beyond your own thoughts and ideas and is used as an outsource to solve your equations/problems and write your essays.

AI is there to assist with your existing ideas. To help you brainstorm and flesh out your ideas and assist with you staying the course. It should be your last step when approaching an assignment, not your first step. When we do the opposite, we lose the plot, and once the plot is lost, it becomes unethical.

The approach to academic work has vastly changed, and that change has forced educators to reexamine how they approach the curriculum and how they teach the material. Their decision to implement and promote the use of AI is not an easy one, because once they advocate for its use, it can easily be abused instead of working as an assistant and tool for educational purposes.

In a recent MIT study, it’s been noted that up to 83% of students who use AI to write an essay couldn’t quote a single line from the paper they had just “written,” showing drastically reduced brain activity during the assignment. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I believe the constant grievances from students lamenting how professors issue assignments as if they’re not taking other classes is a direct response to the idea that professors are aware that AI is being used for the majority of assignments turned in. Regardless of how you try to manipulate the AI work and pass it off as your own.

It goes without saying that AI is running amok and morphing into a form of anti-intellectualism. The fact that no one wants to read suggests that an illiterate culture is on the horizon, and therein lies that issue of intellectual discomfort. Our inability to sit and stew in the unknown is crippling our minds.

Listen, no one is saying you can’t have shortcuts, but if we are here to obtain advanced knowledge, then we must learn how to trust our ideas, thoughts, and minds from the information we’ve obtained through study. AI is destroying our ability to think critically, and critical thinking is already on the decline. AI is doing nothing more than causing us to think less critically and think less altogether.

So, when you engage academically with Artificial Intelligence, use it ethically, with integrity and most importantly, with honesty.