When someone mentions Artificial Intelligence, or more commonly known as AI, the mind may immediately go to people using it in exchange for their own original thinking 一 people using it as a shortcut instead of actually doing the work. But where does the information from AI websites actually come from and what are the potential dangers of it?
AI-based websites and databases collect all of their information from everything that has ever been on the internet. That photo you posted on Facebook 10 years ago? Yup, AI has access to that. A tweet made about your favorite ice cream flavor? AI can scan the web, find that tweet and use it in an argument supporting the same flavor you picked.
A student from across the world could be using something you uploaded years ago to complete a homework assignment in their class.
AI is taking real human thoughts and disguising them as brand new, robotic ideas and then feeding them back to humans as “original” work.
Students are being falsely reprimanded for using certain writing styles and literary devices that have been characterized as AI 一 a computer’s thoughts. So, why is this happening when they were initially from the actual brain of a living human being?
Even AI can’t find the difference between human work and robot work. According to Medium, after using an AI detector on papers written entirely with their own brains, “many results come back with a high AI percentage.”
Everything that has a reputation for being “AI” originally came from people. They are just overused words, phrases and writing styles that AI picked up on and started using because people made them popular. Now, AI has taken those, once human, writing styles and claimed them for itself.
If an em dash is found in a student’s essay, concern is immediately raised. Teachers jump to the conclusion that AI must have been consulted to help or has entirely written the students’ essay, but an em dash has been around since before AI. Teachers shouldn’t be adjusting how they view and grade our essays now that AI is present, especially when there is no pivotal proof that AI was used.
I understand that teachers have to put in overtime to differentiate hard work actually completed by their students and what is fraudulent. But it is simply not fair for students to have to go out of their way to weaken their writing, in fear of it getting flagged as AI because it has similar style and literary devices.
If a student wants to use an em dash, a neatly formatted list or whatever it may be, they should be able to. AI has taken what was once ours, but we still have the time to take it back. Write however without stressing if it sounds like AI because, honestly, that is a good thing.
Sounding like AI just means you sound like an original person because that’s what AI wants to be. It wants to be a human and it steals human thoughts, claiming them as its own. So, if anyone accuses you of using AI, take it as a compliment, because they think you sound like a human.
