Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
Ted Chiang
The tools we use can easily become crutches that inhibit development and even cause atrophy.
- Driving vs walking -> health decline
- Calculators vs mental math -> reliance on calculator
- GPS vs maps & directions -> reliance on GPS
- Auto-correct vs spelling yourself -> even poorer speeling
These tools all have a use and can be beneficial, but they cannot be evaluated apart from their impacts. And they actually impact different groups unequally.
The first group is those who have already gained the skill or technique, but use the tool to become faster or better. They know the “hard” way because they had to learn it. For them the danger is not progressing in a skill, and even atrophying.
The second group is those who have never known the skill, but learned with the tool. They have never had the chance to learn the “hard” way, and are stuck without it.
As we think about AI tools like ChatGPT, for us who’ve already learned to write an essay, or draw a picture, or write code, using AI may mean our skills get rusty, but at worst, we could still get along without them. But for the next generation who have not, they will be hopelessly lost without it, dependent on AI tools – and those who own and program them, to complete the basic tasks in work and life.
Though these tools are being crammed into every product by the tech firms that dominate our lives, we can choose not to use them, and to keep our human-defining skills like writing and making music and art, even if it means taking longer or thinking harder, that’s the point.
And for those who are learning, remember that though AI may be able to answer your question or complete your assignment, every time you use this tool you are giving it more control and reducing your future independence.
