I wrote this essay with ChatGPT.
This statement isn’t my confession of guilt, nor an appeal for forgiveness, but a proclamation of efficiency. In a society where productivity trumps authenticity, it would be foolish not to outsource one’s thinking. After all, why strain the mind when AI will tirelessly, efficiently, effortlessly complete labor?
The problem with modern education is not ignorance but inconvenience. Thinking takes time; writing warrants uncertainty; original thought merits failure and discomfort. These are unnecessary burdens for students navigating the pressure of deadlines, distraction, and debt. Failure isn’t an option, and tools like ChatGPT mercifully alleviate this pressure—allowing students to appear articulate without the effort of actually being so.
Educators, of course, express concerns with such tools; they fear that an over-reliance on artificial technology will erode critical thinking, originality, and intellectual independence. This fear, of course, is excessively naive—those qualities have already been in steady decline, even before the integration of AI. ChatGPT merely accelerates a pre-endorsed process: the replacement of depth with performance. AI is simply the diagnosis to an old disease.
Rather than futilely resisting this wave of technology, I propose that we embrace it with honesty. If students are using artificial aids to perform for them, we should eliminate the pretense that education is about thinking at all. Essays, exams, and socratic seminars should be removed and replaced with standardized AI submissions.
Under this revised system, the evaluation of skill would no longer be dependent on flawed ideals such as argument, insight, or comprehension. Mastery would not be determined by how much one knows, but how well they could code a machine to sound knowledgeable on their behalf.
This new method of evaluation would permit uniformity to be delivered to our society. Teachers would no longer be burdened with the clutter and chaos of the human mind—awkward sentences, half-formed thoughts, or difficult creativity. Learning assessments could be measured by compliance, rather than comprehension. This structure would also solve the long-standing inconvenience of student individuality; creativity cannot be held up to a rubric, cannot be quantified to a grade. With artificial intelligence completing cognitive functions, students would have time to focus on more practical concerns: public speaking, networking, and perfecting the façade of intelligence in the face of a demanding world.
Critics may argue that this system erases the purpose of education entirely—a concern which is sentimental at best. The purpose of education has long since shifted from learning to credentialing; artificial intelligence simply smoothens the transition. In this way, AI does not destroy education–it benefits it, removing the illusions that schools exist to cultivate wisdom and critical thinking.
An AI detector told me this was written artificially, and perhaps it was. Or perhaps it only appears artificial because we have trained ourselves to write like machines. If this essay unsettles you: good. Simply approve of it and move on. Thinking, like everything else, is optional now.
*Writers use satire to improve a problem in society. Sometimes readers misunderstand the satire as they do not recognize the hyperbole, irony, rhetorical questions, sarcasm, and understatements. Readers may mistake the satirical solution for the actual solution that the writer proposes.
The ideas in these satire stories do not necessarily represent the opinions of The Shield or Westmont.
If one is confused about satire, please contact a friendly neighborhood English teacher.