They say writing is a journey — or a battle. And I think I could not disagree. Jotting down one’s thoughts in a notebook is like exploring the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Trying to fill an empty space of Microsoft Word or Google Docs with ideas can feel like space travel. I remember that in the latter part of my elementary school years and in most of my high school years, my teachers in English would assign the class to write essays on the topics they chose. The writing exercises were done inside the classrooms. Composition notebooks became the reflection of my inner self. Students were graded based on how well they write and how good they were in organizing ideas. Since my command of the English language was — and still is — suspect, my essays in my composition notebooks are filled with my teachers’ red-pen-flagged wrong phrases, misspellings and ungrammatical shenanigans. But that’s how a student learns — learning from mistakes. A good student is never a perfect student. I don’t want to think that I was a good student, but I managed to earn my college degree and get myself a job (even though it is not a high-paying variety).
The Rise of AI in Education
Now, we are in the age of artificial intelligence chatbots, and, without a doubt, students are using them in composing their writing assignments, reports, research papers and theses. I encountered some students’ articles on local newspapers and websites, and the quality of their prose is too polished — or sounds too robotic. I bet some teachers, too, are using them to write their academic papers for ranking purposes.
Acceptable vs. Unacceptable Use
Using AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini to fix grammar and awkward sentence structure is not entirely bad. What is unacceptable is for one to let an AI chatbot write an entire essay and own the output as one’s own even without editing and fact-checking. Despite improvements in AI models, they are still prone to hallucinations — a term describing AI’s propensity to fabricate non-existent information, personalities, studies, laws, events, just to name a few. Human oversight is needed when one uses AI.
Recommendations for Educators
It would be better for education officials to craft rules on how teachers and students can use AI, or craft curriculum on how to teach AI to students. While waiting for that, I think it would be good for teachers to teach their students that writing is a journey of the mind and inner self. Writing is a good journey, even though it would be difficult for some students. All of us are not born writers, but writing is a basic necessity in life — and one should write with sincerity. There is no sincerity in letting an AI chatbot write a love letter to a person that one’s heart desires. AI has no beating heart.
