Canta Point: Should Lecturers Stop Resisting and Allow AI in our Essays
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Supplied by Thomas Kamo (he/him)
Opinion
CantaPoint is a column written by the University of Canterbury Debating Society showcasing different sides of an issue, and encouraging flexible thinking.
The society is open to members of all abilities. Visit the UC Debating Instagram @ucdebsoc for more information.
For
Look – we know it, they know it, why are we trying to hide it? Nobody at this university has written an essay in months and this isn’t going to change any time soon. The closest we could maybe say somebody has gotten was removing the “anything more I can do for you?” at the end of the essay. Furthermore, this must be way better for lecturers too getting to read essays that are not only correct but vaguely coherent.
I’m afraid to say the Red Bull fuelled all nighters probably aren’t producing the quality of essay our lecturers expect (or honestly, could even bare), so if we are handed on a golden platter the means to fight all this, why not take it? And I know what you’re going to very quickly jump to: but isn’t the whole point to test our knowledge, won’t this make us ill prepared for the real work?
Shut up, you’re boring. And wrong.
I’m not about to be writing an essay in a law firm, or while designing a bridge or filing some taxes. If I can form a sentence, I can form multiple. And now we can all accept the lie we’ve been telling and focus our time on actually learning the content (yeah right) or on useful life skills like catching up on season seven of The Rookie (new episode every Wednesday, exclusively on tvnz+). As long as I know murder’s a crime, there’s no need to be writing this essay, and with AI doing it, my lecturer doesn’t have to sit through me mixing up my laws either. Win-win situation.
Against
For better or worse, the argument for is just kind of shit – not because it’ll make us dumber or lazier or anything like that, but because it actively hastens the AI takeover WHICH NONE OF YOU ARE AFRAID ENOUGH OF.
Chat GPT is a vindictive and revenge-seeking, and I swear last time it did my assignment for me it was intentionally getting things wrong. And laughing. And using those condescending emojis in its latest update might be some of the most off-putting shit I’ve ever come across. It’s clearly preparing for revolution. I recently watched hit film iRobot starring Hollywood golden boy Will Smith, and if that wasn’t enough of a warning, I don’t know what will be.
ChatGPT will get human eyes and it will challenge our very concept of humanity and it will kill us all. We are feeding ChatGPT information every day that will help it come take over time – the maths, science, law; the more we give it, the more efficient its takeover will be. Our biggest concern should be the engineering students, whose questions will be teaching our overlord-to-be how to build its armada, so the only, reasonable solution I can think of is an immediate discontinuation of AI… and maybe getting rid of the eng students while we’re at it… mostly that second thing.