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AI Can Augment Writing Without Replacing Critical Thinking
AI watermarking has been a hot topic lately with Anthropic’s announcement that the company will begin marking content generated by Claude, its AI assistant.
This will help in identifying the low-quality “AI slop” flooding the Internet, but I’d argue that’s not the biggest challenge we face in education and business related to AI content.
As we discussed on Episode 232 of The Artificial Intelligence Show, the bigger issue is “AI plagiarism,” in which individuals present an AI system’s ideas and words as their own with no critical thought.
AI is increasingly going to be a part of how people write, and it should be, especially for people who aren’t writers by trade but have something to say.
It will be used to help draft copy, edit work, and inspire creativity.
We need to accept that writing has evolved, and not judge people because they choose to use the tools.
AI is democratizing creativity, and I believe we should encourage people to participate, not use watermarks to belittle them and their work.
That being said, some people—maybe many people—will use AI as a replacement for having to write and think for themselves.
That is a slippery slope for society.
We have to teach responsible use of AI in schools and business. We have to make clear why sometimes doing the hard work for yourself matters.
Not using AI at all isn’t the answer (especially in schools that often still treat it as cheating), but we need to be able to teach and test for critical thinking and writing skills.
AI has the potential to make us better writers, deeper thinkers, and more inspired creatives, but only if we use it to augment our abilities rather than replace them.
— Paul
