AI and Critical Thinking
Socrates unknown artist Photo Credit: Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford [CC BY-NC] As a university lecturer in the humanities, where essays remain a key means of assessment, I am not surprised to hear that there has been an explosive increase in the use of AI. It is aggressively promoted as a time-saving good by tech companies, and wider political discourse only reinforces this view without questioning AI's limitations and ethics. While AI may be useful in several academic contexts, its use by students to write essays is indicative of the devaluing of humanities subjects and a misunderstanding of what original writing in disciplines such as history, literature and philosophy enables: critical thinking. "How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?" asked the great novelist EM Forster. He meant that learning to write well, to feel one's way through the development of an idea or argument, is at the heart of writing. When we ask AI to write an essay...