Don’t get comfortable with such deception

I have been a writing tutor for more than 20 years. My students have included Marine veterans, business people and hundreds of college, high school and middle school students, including some whose native language was not English. Students who are comfortable with their writing skills don’t need a tutor. Most realize communication in writing is essential for a successful career. I never saw those students because they create writing based on individual skills honed sharp by reading and practice. But the others? Oh, my. No matter their introduction to English — a language most of them spoke albeit broken — writing was more than a chore. Some of these students plagiarized and didn’t flinch when I told them they were stealing the work of others, and instructors knew it. Other students wrote how they spoke, adding “like” to a sentence when the word was only a nonword in spoken English. Often, students bought writing from websites advertising college-level essays and reports. If I caught one, I’d call out the student for cheating. I then shamed the business that offered this writing, accusing them of creating hundreds of young people who couldn’t write. Artificial intelligence might put those sites out of business. I hope so. What will AI do for the students who can’t write? Those who “hate” writing, as I heard over and over? Those people will use AI to meet writing deadlines in school and, if not caught cheating, slip through the education net to the workplace and write words for which they don’t know the meaning.

I realize artificial intelligence is a technical innovation to make people’s lives easier. But if AI is not monitored, living an easy life will be impossible because it will be based on deception.

Sarah Bates, Fallbrook