Your teen just got busted ‘cheating’ with ChatGPT. What would you tell them?

A friend of mine recently said his teenage son had been accused of using ChatGPT to write a school assignment.

Of course, the boy denied it … though he later backtracked and admitted to using the AI bot to write some of the essay.

But it got me thinking: what would I say to my kids if they were caught using ChatGPT to write a school essay?

There are obvious cliches like “when you cheat, you’re cheating yourself” and issues around the quality of information and AI ‘hallucinations’, etc.

But here are a few additional points I’d make to our young ChatGPT ‘cheat’:

Why can the adults cheat?

Firstly, I would say that writing and thinking are among the hardest things you can do. It’s why people have used transcription services and ghostwriters in the past to make writing and communicating easier.

So, it’s not surprising that you would try to find a shortcut.

And ChatGPT is almost magical – you plop in a few prompts and out pops a reasonably articulate response.

Who wouldn’t want to use it? Plus, all the adults are using it at work – why can they cheat?

I would add that there’s nothing at all wrong with trying to find easier ways to do things. It has been a major driver of human progress.

AI agnostic

Secondly, I would make the point that I am AI agnostic.

Some people fear it will ruin humanity and take all our jobs; others think it will lead us to utopia.

Part of me thinks that AI has landed on society like a plague on a starving, besieged town; our cultural immune system is weakened, making us vulnerable.

Another part of me has seen technology integrated successfully into humanity to improve lives. So I sit somewhere in between despair and optimism.

I’d also point out that humanity’s use of technology and AI isn’t particularly new. Our hero, the French philosopher René Descartes, was writing extensively on the distinction between man and machine in the 17^th century, and his insights still inform thinking about artificial intelligence.

AI will probably do some amazing things – perhaps cure cancer, solve climate change, and possibly trigger a massive stock market bubble!

That doesn’t mean we should gloss over its downsides.

Your mind is beautiful

One of the things that concerns me most is ChatGPT’s impact on critical thinking and reasoning: our ability to use our minds to step back and analyse and judge.

Remember, the human mind is a beautiful thing. Arguably, it is the only thing we truly have (there is a reason Descartes and other philosophers use the ‘mind’ and the ‘soul’ interchangeably.)

Our mind includes our ability to learn and know and understand (our intellect) and our ability to judge and choose and act volitionally (our will).

Most things in life are subject to fortune (including our bodies), and the hard truth is that we can’t really control anything except our reason.

Our mind – our reason – is what makes us free. It’s also what makes you, you and me, me.

Given how important our minds are, I would counsel that we need to proceed cautiously in how we use ChatGPT and the potential impact on our critical thinking and our ability to be free and ourselves.

Your enemies want you distracted

Trust me, there are a lot of vested interests counting on you not to think critically and independently; the spruikers, the propagandists, the ideologues …

They want to easily slip through your distracted mind to ship you their shoddy wares (yes, that can include selling you AI).

New evidence suggests ChatGPT can make you less smart

Some evidence is now emerging that ChatGPT does in fact damage our critical thinking.

An MIT study found that using large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, to write can make us dumber – they reduce neural engagement and degrade critical thinking.

The researchers divided essay writers into three groups: ChatGPT-only, writers who used Google, and brain-only writers. The ChatGPT-only group showed the lowest brain activity when writing the essay; the brain-only the highest brain activity.

It is early days, and this report isn’t peer reviewed, and there are some criticisms of the study.

But, again, it does suggest that caution is warranted.

Incidentally, by maintaining your critical thinking skills, you will be better placed to assess the hype (and doom) around AI and navigate this challenging environment more skillfully.

You are giving up a competitive advantage

One of the more interesting findings of MIT’s research was that the ChatGPT-only essays were also less creative and independent.

The judges of the essays could tell which writers had used ChatGPT because the ideas and language were standard.

The experts judged them to be, that’s right, ‘soulless’!!

By using ChatGPT, you are removing your chance to shine; to put your authentic self and soul – your unique thoughts and insights – into the world.

And it’s this very uniqueness that makes you able to compete against AI.

Good writing helps you think clearly

Yes, ChatGPT makes writing and communication easy.

But it is the difficulty of writing and communicating clearly that also makes these skills so valuable.

Writing forces you to sit down and think. Many smart people attest to not really knowing what they think about a topic until they write about it.

Most people assume Amazon is a technology and retailing company. But it is also a writing company.

Jeff Bezos has made clear writing the heart of Amazon’s decision-making. Executives need to produce a tightly written document, a ‘6-pager’, ahead of important meetings where ideas are presented. They spend up to a week crafting it.

Before a new idea is actioned, executives also have to write a dummy press release as if the product were being announced, an exercise that forces them to think clearly about what customer problem the product/service is solving.

By using ChatGPT, you’re robbing yourself of a skill that allows you to think a topic through clearly and rigorously.

You slip ‘punch in the head’ editing

A major part of good writing is good editing. But editing is more than looking for errors or streamlining sentences, which ChatGPT can do.

An experienced writer and communicator knows writing is a process. You write a draft. Then you send it to an editor or trusted reader.

What usually comes next is what I call the “punch in the head” (I use a violent metaphor because that’s literally how it feels – a blow to the head).

It’s when the editor or reader gives you feedback and you realise, “sh*t this is nowhere near as good as I thought”; when you realise there is a massive hole in your argument; or that you’ve waffled.

The punch in the head wakes you up to the realisation that you need to put in a lot more work to make this piece good.

But ChatGPT, I fear, doesn’t deliver a punch in the head.

Yes it might give suggestions; but it doesn’t give you that meta, sinus-clearing realisation that your writing in this particular instance is crap; a realisation I might add that is a completely normal part of the writing and creative process … if you want to produce good material.

You can be trampling on trust

Another downside of ChatGPT is trust. When people read your writing, they expect that it comes from you.

When you use ChatGPT, you have breached that trust.

Now, everyone is suspicious, looking for signs of ChatGPT. I keep seeing articles like ‘I instantly know you're using ChatGPT when I see this …’

I talk with employers who now seem suspicious of resumes and cover letters. Which fraud has used ChatGPT?

We have a trust deficit in society already; ChatGPT has deepened it.

Like the MIT judges, most sophisticated people can tell you’ve used ChatGPT even without using screening software, so it’s best to stick with being authentic.

(This, of course, is different for large organisations with mass markets who can use AI to increase efficiency.)

You hand over the power of language

I would also note that we should be particularly careful around language.

Language is powerful.

It is how we communicate, how we transmit information and ideas. But it’s far more than this: it’s how we define reality.

Words change the world. The words of Jesus, Descartes, Freud, Marx, etc, all changed how humans looked at the world.

By using ChatGPT, we are using language mindlessly and we are ceding power … to robots.

You could miss out on a life-long quest

Finally, learning to write and communicate well – becoming eloquent – can also be a magnificent lifelong quest.

There are few things in life where you can tinker and learn and play and get better over a period of years, right up until old age.

I know I’m biased, but I think everyone should be working alongside their main career to become a better writer and communicator.

When you hand over your writing to ChatGPT, you are denying yourself an amazing lifelong journey to become a joyful craftsman.

(A lot of ChatGPT/AI talk is solely focused on the workplace and ignores the broader context of what makes a great life, which I would argue includes craftsmanship.)

No surrender

There is a lot of hype around AI and ChatGPT; many leaders are urging people to ‘get on board’ with cutting-edge tools or they will be ‘left behind’.

But, as we’ve seen, there are a lot of downsides.

Personally, I view ChatGPT as a souped-up Google. It’s fine for background research, brainstorming and basic editing.

But when it comes to artificial intelligence, it’s important to remember that the intelligence is artificial.

So my strong recommendation would be to never use it to write. Be a real writer, not a parroting prompter.

AI ethicist Dr Sam Sammane says AI tools have great potential. But used incorrectly, they can lead to “intellectual complacency”.

“We’ve always had tools,” he says. “What’s changed is our readiness to surrender to them entirely.”

That’s exactly my advice: use AI and ChatGPT but don’t surrender to them entirely … particularly the writing bit.