By Scott Graber
When I was at George Washington Law School (1967-1970), there was a frenzy underway in Washington, D.C. It was kinda like the French Revolution without the guillotine — radical reform was on the Mall and in the air.
A lot of that angst was connected to Vietnam; but the frenzy spilled-over into the curriculum at GWU.
And so it was decided that the grading of law students — grades awarded for written essays in small blue books — was fundamentally unfair. Henceforth there would be (for most courses) a simple pass/fail grade that would avoid the more precise, A, B, C, D or F.
One would think that the lack of precision might create a problem for law firms seeking the best and brightest; but membership on the schools’s law review became the way that visiting firms found future partners.
In this connection I have just finished a piece titled, “The End of the Essay” in the New Yorker Magazine (Hau Hsu, July 7/14) which begins with two students named Alex and Eugene (not their real names) who utilize Artificial Intelligence (Chat GPT, Claude, DeekSeek, Gemini) to write their college papers.
Alex relies on Claude for research, DeekSeek for reasoning, Gemini for images and Chat GPT for “any type of writing in my life.” Eugene admitted that he used Chat GPT to draft his application to NYU.
The question presented here is whether or not Artificial Intelligence is an acceptable tool; or is it basically dishonest.
“It’s cheating, but I don’t think it’s, like cheating,” Eugene said. He saw Alex’s art history essay as a victimless crime. He was just fulfilling requirements, not training to become a literary scholar.”
“Until we’re eighteen,” writes Hua Hsu, “we go to school because we have to. … We’re essentially learning how to follow rules. College, however, is a choice and it has always involved a tacit agreement that students will follow a set of tasks, sometimes pertaining to subjects they find pointless or impractical, and then receive some kind of credential. But even for the most mercenary students, the pursuit of a grade or diploma comes with an ancillary benefit. You’re being taught how to do something difficult, and maybe, along the way you come to appreciate the process of learning. But the arrival of A.I. means you can now bypass the process, and the difficulty altogether.”
But, apparently, colleges have pretty much given up on the “difficulty” part of the collegiate experience.
“Unable to keep pace, academic administrations have largely stopped trying to control students’ use of artificial intelligence and adopted an attitude of hopeful resignation, encouraging teachers to explore practical, pedological applications. … Oxford University, Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business experimented with incorporating A.I. into their curricula.”
One way that English Departments have fought back is to assign a particular passage say, the opening paragraphs of Bleak House, and then require the students use a pen and paper — or the infamous “blue book” — to write their answering essay.
All of which provoked a professor at the University of Virginia to “ponder the logistics of oral exams. ‘Maybe we go all the way back to 450 B.C.’”
But the question really comes down to whether or not Artificial Intelligence devalues, or destroys, the value of a college degree, making it impossible for an employer to make a decision about the ability of a recent graduate to reason and write.
This ability to judge (based upon a diploma) is important when it comes to medical school, but less so if the applicant is seeking a position in sales, or the hospitality industry. But, of course, there is the LSAT as well as the MCAT, and future pilots are usually hired on their mental and mechanical ability to control a passenger airplane.
“According to a recent study of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, human intellect has declined since 2012. An assessment of tens of thousands of adults in nearly thirty countries showed an over-all, decade long drop in test scores for math and for reading comprehension. Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at O.E.C.D. hypothesized that the way we consume information today — often through short social-media posts — has something to do with the decline in literacy.”
While it is alleged that we still have the best colleges in the world, this apparent decline in “comprehension” should be troublesome for academics.
Perhaps it should be troublesome for all of us.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
