By Noah Monk, Junior Reporter
One of my favourite movie lines is from the 2004 film, I, Robot, when Detective Spooner interrogates the android Sonny and says: “Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” Sonny replies: “Can you?”
Back then, artistic creativity was seen as uniquely human, whereas logic and precision belonged to machines. Now the answer to Spooner’s question is an annoyingly obvious: Yes, they can, and often better than you.
These conceptions of the future put forth in I, Robot have long been surpassed. Despite its poor aging, other older lessons about how humans have reacted to new technology have been aging like fine wine. Almost daily, I see professors forsaking A.I. as if this technology was unexpected. Yet these fears about technology have existed for millennia.
Machines have always had a huge potential to be profitable, and they also have great potential to make the lives of people easier. For both corporations and people, to not capitalize on such a valuable resource is foolish.
More importantly, I think people and professors need to realize is that these problems around A.I. like ChatGPT are not new. For example, way back in ancient Athens, Plato captured these problems beautifully in his dialogue Phaedrus. In the dialogue, the reader sees Socrates telling Phaedrus that writing is a dangerous invention that weakens the memory of those who use it and advocates for oral discourse over writing. These arguments parallel modern arguments against A.I. that generative A.I. will weaken creativity, and critical thinking.
If people had followed Socrates’ advice, none of his ideas would have survived, but more importantly, the true potential of writing would have never manifested. The same is true of generative A.I. It is a tool, not a replacement. You cannot reach the moon without rockets and likewise, certain new frontiers will only be reachable with the assistance of A.I.
Banning generative A.I. usage in classes only worsens the situation. If you want students to use A.I. properly, you must not only show them how, but also what it is good for, when it is detrimental, as well as how to treat it as an extension of the self rather than a substitution of the self. A sword merely extends the arm of a swordsman; the sword is not a replacement for the swordsman. Similarly, generative A.I. should extend our minds, not replace them. For many people like myself, this is not obvious.
My writing is not naturally good like Shelley or Kant. I may have ideas that are worth exposure, but without guidance, my ideas will never see the page. I think it is crucial that I attempt to write my ideas for stories and essays no matter how awful the execution, but I also think that with A.I. showing me how my writing can be improved, showing my literary weaknesses in a timely manner, I may have a nonzero probability to become a real writer and write something that is decent. A.I., when used properly, expands ordinary human potential for greatness.
A lot of professors think that cheating using A.I. is a serious problem and is the primary reason to restrict its use, but cheating is not new. Students have always been finding ways to cheat like solution manuals, graduated students, and online forums. Generative A.I. is simply another new method. The real problem of A.I. is not cheating but social issues: financial strain, academic expectations, and parental pressure. Many students do not cheat out of malice, rather out of desperation. Dazai’s beggar student is no longer a fictional character but a commonplace reality. Students are caught between academia’s cult of the elite and rising costs of living. If you want cheating to decrease, the quality of life required for learning needs to improve significantly.
To give credence to I am saying, we must turn to the history of chess computers. For most of chess history, computers did not exist. Early chess computers were laughably weak. By the 1980s, chess computers started matching humans and competed in tournaments like the 1982 U.S. Open. In 1997, Deep Blue defeated the world champion. Today, a chess computer on a phone will effortlessly crush the world champion.
Since 2005, top chess players have been training using chess computers. Today, every player in the top ten uses a chess computer. Chess computer evaluations reshaped chess theory, raised the average chess rating, and propelled players to new ranks once unimaginable. Chess computers made chess players stronger, not weaker.
Of course, cheating in chess has risen significantly too, but it is driven by survival pressure. Many grandmasters live close to poverty as open tournament prize funds diminish and concentrate in private elite tournaments. As world champion Magnus Carlsen remarked, “There are other areas where you can be worse at something and have a better life.” Due to drop in quality of life of grandmasters, they are now resorting to desperate measures like using chess computers for cheating to survive. When cheating becomes a survival strategy, the problem lies not with technology, but the conditions forcing people into desperation. The same is true for students and A.I.
Counterarguments against A.I. in the context of pollution, are reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution. Machines replaced workers, and industrialization polluted the environment. The real issue is not the machines, it is the structure of society: that people must work jobs to survive, and that consumption must increase. Pollution grows with production driven by excessive consumerism in search of false happiness.
A.I. is not a bad thing. The problem is that society as a whole is in a state of turmoil and the average person’s life is miserable. The situation around A.I. will rapidly worsen unless we address these issues now. What we choose to do is critical, as it will dictate our future. As Nietzsche would point out, what you choose now, you choose for all time. To borrow from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science: “The question in each and every thing, ‘Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight.”