Calculator is not the same as AI
Admittedly, I do have my own reservation about using calculators.
I do think over-dependence on the tools can blunt our brains. Never mind doing mental calculations, you will have a hard time doing basic ones even with a paper and a pencil. Unless you are dealing with very long lists of numbers, you need to calculate really quickly or you don’t have a paper and pencil at your disposal, I believe you should never resort to calculators.
And I say that as someone who has awful experiences with math education.
What does this have anything to do with AI?
Well, some people defend the idea of using AI to write our school and university essays, arguing the backlash is comparable to the fearmongering about calculators in math classes. With that logic, they go even further by claiming that AI ‘haters’ should see calculator-using employees as salary free-riders because they don’t do the calculations themselves.
It is a bad comparison for two reasons.
First, those employees are not hired and paid for their ability to calculate without calculators, they are hired to do tasks which happen to involve calculations on varying degrees. Not to mention the employers don’t give a damn whether their employees use calculators or not; unless they are self-righteous math nerds who ask to be swirlied, why should they care about how their employees count the numbers?
Meanwhile, in formal education, you are meant to do the assignments and answer the exams yourselves. If someone else does the assignments for you and gives you the answers, you are cheating and that can land you in sanctions and even expulsions.
It is one thing to use AI as an alternative to Google search, it is another when you to tell AI to write the essays for you.
How is that not obvious to you?
The second reason why it is a bad comparison? Well, calculation is not enough, we need to understand the numbers as well.
Accountants need to conclude whether their employers are financially healthy or not. After reading the awful test results, doctors need to determine the best treatments for their patients. Basically, they need to understand what the numbers represent and how they pertain to their jobs. They cannot use calculators to do those, they need to think for themselves.
Compare that to using AI to do your school/university assignments.
While you/your lecturers may be the ones who choose the topics, you are not the ones who do the researches, inquiring and the writing. You delegate all of those undertakings to AI, even though academia demands you to do all of them yourselves. You get grades despite not doing anything worthy of them.
Again, how is that not obvious to you?
Even worse, not only you are a cheater, you are turning yourselves into worthless human resources. Because you tell AI to do all of the works, you never sharpen your skills. In this case, they are your research, critical thinking and written communication skills.
While you may (anti-intellectually) argue the assignments’ topics are useless knowledge, you cannot deny those aforementioned skills are valuable for your future prospects in well-paid jobs.
Unless… you believe lacking them is something be proud of.
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