The loss that he describes is deeper and more existential than anything academic integrity can protect: a specific, if perhaps decaying, way of being among students and their teachers. “AI has already changed the classroom into something I no longer recognize,” he told me. In this view, AI isn’t a harbinger of the future but the last straw in a profession that was almost lost already, to funding collapse, gun violence, state overreach, economic decay, credentialism, and all the rest. New technology arrives on that grim shore, making schoolwork feel worthless, carried out to turn the crank of a machine rather than for teaching or learning.
I remember my freshman university writing class and getting totally OWNED by the first assignment, I was so mad bc I had always gotten top scores in writing in high school, I was actually offended
Luckily I was able to pull my head out of my ass and learn to write from my instructor but not out of some desire to improve but bc I was a nerd that wanted A’s
I am lucky I went to a school that had uni writing as a requirement bc if I had gone somewhere else I probably would have never learned to write properly