A Specter Is Haunting Our Schools: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence in Writing
The presence of artificial intelligence in schools is both promising and challenging to manage. How should we regulate it? An open letter from F. Cremascoli to fellow Italian teachers in high schools. The author emphasizes the reduced role of literature in compulsory education (which in Italy ends at age 16) while advocating for strong language skills in recognizing and producing a wide variety of texts. This emphasis stems from the fact that literature traditionally plays an outsized role in Italian courses starting from age 11 — a somewhat excessive role. This context helps clarify the purpose of the open letter. This text is on italianacontemporanea.com, March 2023
Dear Colleagues,
A specter is haunting our schools: artificial intelligence. What if AI starts doing students’ homework? How will we teachers tell the difference between a student’s work and something produced by AI? Should we ban its use, as some American universities have done? But no, there’s little point in building walls — after all, the wind blows where it will. We, as teachers, need to know more about it ourselves… These are the kinds of emotional responses that are stacking up, one on top of the other, in what hardly qualifies as a true debate. It’s more a way of expressing concern without genuine understanding or experience with AI.
There’s no need to picture a teacher staying up-to-date by reading thick academic essays. It would be enough for a teacher to try using AI software to write one of the texts they usually assign to students. They would quickly realize that it’s not so simple to produce an accurate, precise text with software. Let me give you some examples based on my experience as a high school Italian teacher.
Teaching Italian to Italians in the 21st Century
A high school Italian course aims to develop a confident mastery of the language. I explored this topic in another open letter a few years ago, titled Teaching Italian to Italians in the 21st Century.
By the end of the five-year course, a “well-prepared” student can recognize a wide variety of texts, meaning they can fully understand what they read or hear. They can also produce various types of texts themselves and speak publicly. Literary texts are just one type among those explored in school, not the only type.
If this is the goal of a high school Italian course, why should we fear AI? Instead, it can be a valuable tool for encouraging students to write. Language skills are practical skills: you learn to read by reading — long live paper and digital books! You learn to write by writing — long live word processors! You learn to speak in public by speaking — long live presentation software! You learn to listen by listening — long live podcasts!
We’ve had these tools for many decades, with the Microsoft Office suite being one of the most popular. When teachers use them and encourage students to use them, they see how effective they are in developing linguistic proficiency.
Now we also have more intelligent software. For writing various types of text, you can try… «ChatGPT!» my loyal and kind readers will say immediately.
The Grades, the Grades…
In my opinion, none of the tools mentioned so far — despite being widely used by many teachers (though not all!) — are particularly useful for assessing students’ knowledge. Since the 1990s, when computers first went online, I’ve avoided allowing computer use for in-class assignments. For evaluating how each individual student applies the literary analysis skills I’ve taught them — skills needed to interpret, for instance, Il pianto della scavatrice by Pier Paolo Pasolini using the critical methodologies we’ve studied — I rely on pen, paper, and spoken responses.
However, if my goal is to evaluate comprehension or the composition of any type of text, based on specific guidelines I provide, why not allow digital tools? Even if students copy parts, an assignment like a review, for example, still needs to meet the requirements of an argumentative text. These are criteria I’ll have already described as unique features of that text type, and students will need to reproduce them in their compositions. So, even if some copying happens, students still need to revise and refine the text; otherwise, they’ll receive a low grade.
But Are Grades Important? Yes and No
I won’t bore you with the pedagogical jargon around assessment. Every experienced teacher knows there’s a difference between evaluating students as they progress and giving a final overall evaluation. It’s time to move beyond the obsession with “classwork.” Things would improve greatly if qualifications (at least at the high school level) didn’t carry legal weight. But who is stopping you, dear colleagues, from managing your grades as they’re recorded in the digital register? Just do so based on a solid (and concise) curriculum, documented in black and white in the official school records, when you submit your syllabus at the start of the year.
Don’t let distrust hold you back. If you truly master your craft as teachers, avoid the common mistake of discussing things in the abstract, only to “discover” distance learning (DAD) when a virus forces you to.
Try using AI for yourself. You’ll find there are too many myths about it. It’s an astonishing tool. But it’s our own reading mind that perceives the product of a massive database, processed at superhuman speed, as something magical. It’s the “lector in fabula” that attributes meaning to the text — meaning the computer doesn’t actually understand, even if it seems like it does.
AI: The Idea is There, But We Still Have a Long Way to Go
Artificial intelligence and writing in school are well-suited to texts with rigid structures and a preference for clear, topical sentences. In a business letter, for example, there’s a repertoire of stock phrases like these: — Our products are highly competitive. We appreciate your request. The conditions we offer our best customers. We confirm that we can meet your requested delivery times. We would be pleased to enter into a business relationship with you. Thank you for choosing us. We inform you that we have already sent the requested sample by courier, etc.
If you were willing to use this repertoire, adding a few specific details about the letter’s subject, you’d end up with a perfect business letter. That’s exactly how AI software works. These “prepared” sentences are part of the database the AI uses. When it comes to more complex texts, however, the result is often vague, which any teacher will quickly recognize and mark for the student as an area for improvement.
Personally, if I had to write a business letter, a circular, or even a newsletter, I’d gladly use AI. I could get rid of a tedious task in minutes. But if I had to write a commentary on Agli amici by Primo Levi, I think doing it with AI would end up being longer and more tiring. So, I’d go the old-fashioned way. And if I wanted to write a story, assuming I were capable (and I’m sure I’m not), I wouldn’t deny myself the pleasure of writing it alone. Art is a privilege of the human mind, a curious mix of three parts water, one part earth, and a breath of wind…
For those of us who, as Italian teachers, engage daily with the giants of Literature, it’s not easy to impress us. We already had a laugh with Jacopo Belbo in Foucault’s Pendulum, when he has Abulafia write lines like, “The Templars are always involved… Minnie is Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend…” To the skeptical Diotallevi, who (prophetically) called the generated text “A little confusing,” Belbo replied: “You just don’t see the connections.”
AI Is Not HAL9000
In short, the computer running AI software is just a machine, executing a program. It has no awareness, no consciousness — it’s not HAL9000, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. What it produces might seem fantastic to us because we’re the ones giving meaning to something the machine itself remains completely unaware of.
On the subject of artificial intelligence and writing in schools, I would recommend two readings for an insightful perspective on the issue: The Age of Learning Machines by Francesco De Collibus and a wonderful interview with Federico Faggin conducted by Stefano Quintarelli for I Copernicani.
(On italianacontenporanea.com all texts are in Italian, but immediate translations are available in English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch,… thanks to the G-Translate plugin)
It’s worth understanding how Artificial Intelligence works, if only to realize how fundamentally different it is from us!
With best wishes,
Vimercate, January 23, 2023