AI and Essay Writing: Should You Still Bother?
A discussion on why writing essays might always be a good idea, even if your friendly AI model can produce 30,000 more.
The question
If AI systems can brainstorm, research and write 100s of essays in minutes, all day long, for as long as they are prompted to, it’s at least reasonable to question whether there’s a point in students trying to write an essay at all.
More broadly, the reality of Gen AI tools raises questions about academia in general. Is it wise to begin, or even continue, studying at university when we have computers running cognitive rings around us? Is it not better to reorientate towards a profession that Gen AI will not be able to replace?
To everyone asking themselves or others these questions, particularly as they relate to the decision of whether to write essays with ChatGPT or not – I’d like to say the following.
The answer
There is still very good reason to continue tapping away at a keyboard, scouring journals and scribbling on paper in pursuit of an excellent essay.
This is because the value of writing an essay isn’t always in the essay itself; it is more often found in the process you go through to write it.
Now for those very much in the throes of academic essay writing as we speak, a reasonable rebuttal might go something like this:
“That is all well and good Sam, but I don’t get marked on the process I went through to write an essay, I get marked on the essay I hand in.”
The argument against this position is one that is relevant to various domains of life in our modern-day world.
Whether it’s friendships, dating, health, wealth or entertainment, we don’t have to look far to find a product or service that promotes, and in some cases delivers, an easy and convenient path to fulfilment in these areas.
Generative AI and essay writing is the newest manifestation of this, where we have a product and service that can bypass the usual process we would go through to write a great essay.
Framed in this way, it’s likely using Gen AI for essay writing will be popular – at least at first.
But as we have learned already in the 21st century, relying on the easy and convenient option is rarely good for us in the long-run, and evidence concerning the negative implications of Gen AI use is already building:
AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task
In short, not only do you lose out on the university education you are paying for by getting Gen AI to write your essays, but you also appear to be making yourself much less capable of writing them in the first place.
This means the more you use ChatGPT to write your essays, the harder it gets to write an essay yourself, even an essay of your current standards, let alone the ones you’d produce if you didn’t use ChatGPT.
In the context of academia, this means you take your education, and give it to the machine.
The solution
I like adages for the reason that they are normally very, very true.
So, in this case, the solution is to use it or lose it.
Keep putting in effort, and in doing so, keep your critical thinking skills and your capacity to write good essays.
But this is not to say we should dispel completely with Gen AI, because after we’ve decided to keep our critical thinking skills and our capacity to write good essays, we can add in Gen AI use as the cherry on top.
How to use Gen AI without losing your edge
What we’ve learnt so far about AI use in the context of things like academic research and essay writing is that much of the value is contingent on how we choose to use it.
In the previous section, I mentioned the value of using Generative AI models to provide some objections to your thesis. In short, when you’ve decided on your essay thesis (your argumentative claim), you can ask an AI model to generate relevant objections to the thesis – objections that you can then counter, and build on in your essay. This is a way of building AI into your cognitive reasoning without leaning too heavily on it and collapsing the whole thing into another AI-generated essay.
That said, let’s not kid ourselves. We still are building AI into our cognitive reasoning when we do this.
For example, if a Generative AI model became your regular source of thesis objections for essays, it’s likely that you’d eventually find that your ability to identify objections yourself might start to get worse.
This is the nature of outsourcing cognitive tasks to a computer, and more generally, of outsourcing anything to anyone. The whole point is that you don’t do it, and they do.
So, even if we use Generative AI in a sophisticated way, by using it to support with small tasks within the essay writing process, let’s remember that it’s possible that we will still become reliant on Generative AI to fulfil those tasks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but worth bearing in mind.
Aspects of essay writing
That said, let’s take a look at some of the parts involved in writing an essay: research, essay ideation, essay claim, objections, counter-objections, essay structure, theory exposition, analysis, evaluation, introduction, main body, conclusion, and references.
In all of these areas, it is possible to use Generative AI to help you clarify and refine your approach, thinking and product.
We know we can use it to generate some objections or counter-objections to your argument. But you can also use it to draft an example essay structure, to identify alternative directions of research, to advise on the form of your conclusion, or the style of your introduction.
You can also ask it to check your references, to help you understand a theory, to comment on your analysis, or to offer best-practices on how to write academically.
All of this is useful, and will provide you with enlightening information, a new perspective on your essay, the bits that are good, and the things you can do to improve it.
That said, once you start using AI to actually create any of these sections for you, it becomes a different matter, and if created to paste into an essay, will almost inevitably end up with a plagiarism flag and a wasted evening.
So, approach the technology as a digital tutor, and as a way of enhancing your learning, and you’ll enjoy it. After all – it’s your essay, not the robot’s.
Putting it into practice: ideation
With all of that in mind, let’s look at a concrete example. There are many ways to use Gen AI well in the essay process, but let’s start with the ideation stage.
Case study
Let’s imagine we are tasked with the following question:
“Is virtue ethics a coherent ethical theory?”
Before engaging at all with a Generative AI model, it’s useful to formulate a short, sharp and intuitive answer to this question. If the question comes with set readings, then make sure you read these first – at least so that you know loosely what they’re discussing and arguing for.
In any case, you might end up with an intuitive answer that looks something like this:
“Yes, virtue ethics is a coherent ethical position because it is logically consistent and flexible in application.”
Using this, you can now engage with Generative AI to develop things further. You can ask it something like this:
“I’m writing an essay on the following question: ‘Is virtue ethics a coherent ethical theory?’ My initial response is as follows: ‘Yes, virtue ethics is a coherent ethical theory because it is logically consistent and practically flexible.’ Present a strong counter argument to this claim.”
The reason this works is because we are immediately challenging our intuitive response to the answer. In doing so, we:
Maintain the motivation to continue exploring the quality of our own argument, and
Get a sense of what a general counter-argument to this claim looks like.
Here’s the AI’s response, paraphrased:
“Virtue ethics is not coherent because it lacks a clear guide to action, and promotes moral conflict.”
Okay great. So, we now have a springboard from which to develop our argument. We can use this counterargument to dive into the literature on virtue ethics, and work towards objecting to these arguments in favour of our own.
To do this, prompt Gen AI with something like the following:
“Give me the most cited papers on virtue ethics that engage with the counterarguments you presented”
At this stage, you’ll be given a selection of papers. You can now find and read the ones you like. And from there, your essay is well on its way to being written.
Conclusion
This is a great way to begin your essay, especially if you are unfamiliar with producing objections and counter-objections. So, try this out when you next write an essay, and let me know what you think.
Remember, this is only one of many ways to use Gen AI well, and the key principle throughout is this: Generative AI should be used to support your thinking, not as a substitute for the thinking itself.
With that in mind, you’re bound to flourish.