1. Is it wrong to let students use AI to generate essays instead of doing their own work? My colleague Gabriele Contessa wrote an excellent response to this question, which goes something like this:
2. (1) University students are adults and it's up to them whether to waste their time and money on a specious degree or actually learn something; (2) If AI can write better than most people, then maybe what students need to learn is how to use AI.
3. I want to add one more response to this question: (3) Academia was always a rigged game. The fact that we force students to use Standard English is a political choice that reinforces the elite status of the group that predominantly uses this vernacular - wealthy white people.
4. People who use non-standard vernaculars have to code-switch to hide their natural way of speaking. The way philosophers in particular write is not highly contrived and rooted in the discipline's history of white supremacist patriarchy.
5. It is designed to be inaccessible and esoteric so as to exclude the majority of people, especially women, racialised minorities, and other oppressed groups.
6. Philosophical jargon legitimates the "professionalism" and credibility of elite philosophical subfields like epistemology and metaphysics, while undermining the credibility of accessible publications and public philosophy, which tend to focus on questions of social justice.
7. Academic norms decide what counts as "real philosophy," i.e., the philosophy preferred by wealthy white men. Here is the question: WHY wouldn't people want to cheat at this game? When a game is rigged, it's no surprise that people cheat.
8. I'm not saying that AI will solve these problems- it most certainly will not. What I'm saying is that the most privileged people were ALREADY CHEATING by rigging the game in their favour. Let's talk about that.
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