"The technologies are now able to credibly complete most undergraduate assignments."
— Washington Post
I bumbled into the job. A colleague knew I had interviewed celebrities for a magazine, and asked if I could talk to his journalism class at Loyola about the challenges of writing profiles of the famous. So I leaned on the lectern for an hour and prattled about walking a golf course in Jamaica with Arnold Palmer and talking jazz over dinner with trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie.
"You're better at this than I am," my colleague said, afterward, suggesting I teach. So I ambled over to the dean's office and he gave me a class teaching feature writing.
I started the students off with writing profiles, the most basic story. You've got your material — someone's life — already assembled. You've got the narrative arc — their career path — waiting to guide you. I signed up 20 real Chicago personalities — TV journalist Carol Marin, firebrand Rev. Michael Pfleger, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas — put their names on index cards, and handed them out to the class.
We moved slowly. First the kids developed questions for their subjects, based on their life stories. I reviewed those. Then the interviews. Eventually, I had 20 finished profiles before me.
Nineteen students understood the assignment. But reading one, on entrepreneur Leslie Hindman, suddenly the tone of the writing shifted dramatically. The profile was describing her business, a Chicago auction house, and it was like moving from gravel to asphalt.
"This is boilerplate," I thought. "She took this off the internet." I plugged a paragraph into a search engine. Up it popped, on the auction house site. Word for word. It took 30 seconds to find.
On the first day of class, I had made a little speech: "I know you can steal stuff from online. Don't do it. Because I'll find out and you'll fail."
I didn't want to confront the student alone, so dragged the dean in with me, as backup. I expected the student to be in trouble, maybe expelled.
That didn't happen. He explained to me that the dire consequences for plagiarism that Loyola warns about were more notional than real. The customer is always right. So together we gently tried to explain to the student who swiped copy why what she did was wrong. It was a struggle.
I thought the student might be ashamed, at least apologetic. She wasn't. She was defiant. This was research! She was a single mother! She needed this class credit! She needed this degree!
I pointed out that, yeah, you need the degree because it means something. If the only thing a Loyola degree represents is that you can deftly swipe other people's work, then it doesn't mean much, does it?
The solution I generously offered — redo the profile without plagiarizing this time — was batted away as draconian. She dropped the course, and huffed off in search of a less rigorous instructor.
Turns out, my student was years ahead of the curve. Now the great engines of technology align to help everyone farm out the creative process. Only suckers do the work.
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People forget that all of this wizardry is vulnerable to an aging, funky electric grid. Without juice, you got bupkis. Better to keep yourself capable without the bots.
ReplyDeleteIf the only thing a Loyola degree represents is that you can steal what others have labored to accomplish...and, more importantly, that you skated and scammed by, and did not learn anything, than not only does it not mean much, then you can wipe your ass with that degree.
ReplyDeleteHell, toilet paper would be more valuable. People will find out you don't know jack and can't do the work. Real Life is not college. You can only be a Kid Charlatan for so long. Even in a city like Chicago.
Mister S, you are mistaken. You are indeed famous, in your own orbit and in your adopted city. You may not have gotten rich, but you are probably better off than many, if not most, in that city.. You live in a leafy suburban paradise. You travel abroad regularly. There are probably quite a few regulars at EGD who can say neither of those things.
And you are rich in ways that have nothing to do with money or power or fame. You have a loving and successful and highly intelligent partner. You have two successful attorney sons. You have three grandkids. You have family and friends. You still have your health at 66. Too many do not. And what has broken, medically speaking, you have been able to fix. A lot of folks can't always do that.
Glad to hear you caught the cheater, Mister S. Single mom be damned. That is not a pass to be a bamboozler and a fraud. Whatever did she think entitled her to such shenanigans? It was no excuse. Have a suspicion as to what might have colored her unjustifiable attitude. She sounds like a few other things, but I won't go there. Never assume. And even online, I have business crucifying a stranger I've never met, even though I'd certainly like to do so, Not the venue for it, either.
Have you ever given any thought to teaching your craft after you retire from it?
You would probably be pretty good at Northwestern or Loyola. Just a thought. One last query: Would Medill have booted her? I'm thinking they tell their students: "Fuck around and find out."
Thanks Grizz — you are of course correct. I am rich in all the things that matter.
DeleteA long, long time ago, I took a class with Ed Eulenberg, who railed against {flowery} language, which went against my grain, not to say that he wasn't right. One thing he was wrong about was his distaste for death notices that claimed that the decedent had died of "heart failure." "Everybody dies of heart failure," he would say, not realizing that "heart failure" is a medical diagnosis strictly limited to certain cardiac conditions, not an all encompassing reference to a heart that failed to work, thus withdrawing life from the entire body.
Deletetate
Amen. The legal world is seeing shameless plagiarizing.and AIing. At least when the schnook is caught, monetary sanctions can be assessed.
ReplyDeleteWhile teaching, I also learned the hard way that Student Judicial Affairs proved unhelpful in cases like the one you described.
ReplyDeleteExperience, research, and engagement form the basis of learning. Writing and spending time with challenging topics enables us to synthesize - to follow our own curiosity and to ask better questions along the way.
I suppose my biggest concern for now is that we’ll lose the spirit of inquiry; to paraphrase TS Eliot, that we’ll have our experiences but miss the meaning.
Which would be a shame. One of my mentors insisted that “greatness is challenged into being.” Struggles, effort, and dedication count within and outside of any classroom. To learn from one another as human beings is a privilege I’d hate to see taken for granted.
One small thing I noted was that you used the word "podium" when I believe you meant "lectern". A conductor stands on a podium. The root of podium is "pod" which is Greek for foot.
ReplyDeleteActually, "podium" and "lectern" are now synonyms, according to no less of a source than Merriam-Webster. But since old guard types do cling to the difference, I'll make the change. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/wait-are-you-saying-a-podium-is-the-same-thing-as-a-lectern
Deletedon't be anal, anon at 7:46 am
DeleteAs an aside, I was also in Montego Bay in 1987, but it had nothing to do with Arnold Palmer. Or golf.
ReplyDeleteOk boomer
ReplyDeleteYou sound like an old man standing on his porch screaming at the kids to get off his lawn.
With the cumulative knowledge of humanity available at a keystroke . It's no longer necessary to memorize all this stuff. Mastering the art of finding information, determining its validity and accurately reproducing certified information is all you have to be able to do now.
You can also take a class in Latin why I'm not sure but people still do it
As I sometimes tell readers, "I'm only responsible for what I wrote, not for what you imagine I wrote." Would you care to consider, perhaps for the first time, what you are trying to say, and then stating it? Because I don't know what you're talking about, or reacting to. Certainly not anything I said. You're "Master the art..." suggestion is just stupid. You also have to be able to make an argument. Give it a try.
DeleteOK Boomer? Really? Got it all figured out I see. Except for being a courteous, thoughtful person capable of doubt. The screens that most young people worship are agenda machines. Someone else is shaping and defining who you are, what you believe, and how you feel. Sympathies from a boomer who created himself.
DeleteOh, and by the way, I did take a course in Latin, so can tell you why I did it. My older son, about 14, was teaching himself Latin because he'd heard it would help him on the SAT. I said, "You know, Bolchazy-Carducci, the largest Latin publisher in the country, is up in Wauconda. I bet they have some kind of home-study course. They did, on CDs. Cost $300, and we took it together. So technology and classics can be friends.
DeleteWe boomers didn't struggle with being incels as your generation does. Is that why you are so cranky? Superiority complexes often arise from feelings of inadequacy. Food for thought.
DeleteOkay, Boomer? Not on my watch, pal.
DeleteYeah, I know it's used merely as a pejorative these days, but it's also an ageist slur. Maybe not as bad as a racial or an ethnic or a misogynist slur, but it's still a slur. Ageism is the last acceptable form of bigotry left in these benighted Untied Snakes, and it gets a pass only because not enough people are called on it. Newsflash: This Boomer does.
Would you say, "Okay, Hebe" or "Okay, bitch", or "Okay, faggot"...or even "Okay ,Ni**er?" Damn betcha you wouldn't. Not without repercussions of various sorts, including the physical in some instances. So why the B-word? if you're not over 60, it's just another put-down, like "That's so gay" was a dozen or more years ago. Mercifully, that's over. Hopefully, the B-word will one day become objectionable, too
If you aren't Jewish or Black or female or LGBTQ, you don't know the sting of certain words. And if you ain't a Boomer, you have no clue, either. Best thing to do is to remove the B-word from your vocabulary...and to just shut the fuck up.
"Mastering the art of finding information, determining its validity and accurately reproducing certified information is all you have to be able to do now."
DeleteBut that's not thinking or creating. (Put aside that the information being fed into AI isn't "certified" as to its "validity" and AI doesn't "accurately" reproduce it).
We had a demo of an AI system at work recently and they proudly told us we could feed all our existing work product into it and it would regenerate it at the push of a key. I thought, a lot of our work product is crap. Why would we want to regenerate crap? If we have never thought of a novel issue, what do we have that can train the AI so it can think of it?
If nobody thinks and everybody just reproduces information they think is "certified", where do new ideas come from? Blind reliance on AI is moving toward a point where we're just infinitely re-dredging the pool of existing knowledge.
I had two years of Latin in a public highschool. After the first year, the teacher moved away. The second year they had to bring in a priest from a local seminary because the school was dropping Latin and they felt they owed us year two. He couldn't handle us public school kids. He even tried to quit at the semester break. I suppose we were a bunch of assholes.
DeleteRaymond : I was a young man when I asked,, then told any kids that were not mine and univited, to get off my lawn. Just like I told dog walkers who stopped to let their pets shit on my property what my father used to say: I don't shit in your yard, but know where you live... As a middle-ager I've told middle and high school kids swearing like rappers to go home and kiss their mothers with that mouth and when challenged displayed my dictionary knowledge of profanity.
DeleteReminder, the power goes out, the satelliite fails, all the technology has been hacked...and most humans will never survive a series of catastrophic crisises no matter what cartoon they believe in.
Yikes, Raymond.
ReplyDeleteSo far every study conducted suggests that having endless information at your fingertips not only makes you dumber, but makes you more susceptible to false information.
I do find you last sentence very interesting. You claim you are not sure why people still take Latin classes. Based on your previous comment, you are clearly not the master in finding information or verifying it. In fact, I would argue you are just as bad as the student "accused" of plagiarism.
Just because you think you're right, doesn't make you right. But I'm not sure you've made it this far into my response.
When I first retired. I really missed the joy of teaching. However, in recent years, I've realized that I got out just in time. I'd hate having to cope with papers written by A.I.
ReplyDeleteAI has benefits. There is no denying that.
ReplyDeleteAI also has drawbacks; just as many other things do.
To me, the bigger issue here is runaway capitalism. While AI most likely would have come to fruition regardless of capitalism, the ubiquity and speed at which AI is consuming jobs, data, and power is mainly attributable to the 1% squeezing every last drop out of everything. nothing is done for good reasons, just money reasons.
AI will most likely find new drugs that save lives and it will undoubtedly allow us to find answers to complex equations that were just not possible before given linear time; but it will also make major mistakes. As proven by Republicans, Pete Hegseth, the US Military, and what ever christian fascist god they support AI will kill people.
But, like many other technologies what becomes of it will depend on the people who harness and control it. After all, we are still trying to understand what truly became of the nuclear age
I think that the point of letting students use AI is precisely to keep them uneducated. If you don't know how to think for yourself -- which is the goal of an education -- you are easier to manipulate. I think that the ultimate goal of the attacks on education since the 1980s are the same thing. It's easier to control and manipulate uneducated people. There's a reason someone once say "I love the uneducated."
ReplyDeleteI prompted Claude: “Write a 300 word essay on waking the dog. Use the style of Neil Steinberg.” Oops, I meant to type “walking the dog.”
ReplyDeleteEvery morning, my dog performs the same small tragedy of waking, and every morning I direct it.
She sleeps like a stone dropped from a great height—flung sideways on the rug, legs splayed, utterly committed to unconsciousness. I approach with the caution of a man defusing something. A hand on the flank. Nothing. I say her name, low, the way you'd address a sleeping king you weren't sure you were allowed to disturb.
There's a school of thought—mine, mostly, invented on the spot each morning—that says you shouldn't startle a sleeping animal, that the transition from dream to daylight should be gentle, negotiated, civilized. This is nonsense I've told myself for years because I like believing I'm a humane household, not a barking sergeant rousing conscripts. So I murmur. I stroke an ear. I wait.
And here is the thing nobody tells you about waking a dog: it is one of the few moments left in adult life containing pure, uncomplicated joy. Her eyes open, unfocused, and then—there it is—recognition. Of me. Of the day. Of the fact that, somehow, against all odds, everything is exactly as good as it was yesterday. The tail goes before the rest of her catches up, thumping the floor like a judge's gavel: case dismissed, life continues, get the leash. [Note: the last seven words were italicized.]
I have waked children, waked wives, waked myself into a thousand gray Mondays requiring coffee and negotiation and the newspaper held like a shield. None of it compares. The dog forgives the interruption instantly, wholly, because she doesn't understand there was anything to forgive. She was asleep. Now she is not. The sun, evidently, still rises for her.
I could learn something here, if I were the kind of man who learned things at 6 a.m. Mostly I just get the leash.
Actually, that's not all that bad. I enjoyed it. Newspaper folks are already becoming as scarce as buggy-whip makers. The same thing will probably happen to prose writers, too. With the passage of enough time, nobody will be able to tell the difference between a talented human and a robot. Nor will anyone really care.
DeleteIt's utter shit. First, he didn't correct the prompt, so the whole essay is about "waking" the dog. I never woke our dog in my life. She wakes me. See, that's the worrisome thing about AI. It has such polish, we miss how stupid it is. And Grizz, don't be so confident about what's coming down the road. You don't know either and shouldn't pretend otherwise. Last time I looked, people still make violins.
DeleteAm 13 years your senior, Mister S, so the road ahead of me is, statistically speaking, probably a lot shorter than yours. Long-term has almost lost its meaning. Care less and less about the marathon and the long run, and more and more about the day-to-day sprint.
DeleteSigned a contract to have my roof replaced, and the salesman's brochures screamed:: "The last roof you'll ever need!"" He was jarringly accurate. Was 72 that day. I'm 79 now. Roofs, pets, new furniture, warranties---they will all outlast me.
So if what's coming down the road, ten years hence, is not so great, I can take grim satisfaction that it's highly improbable I'll be around to experience it. Selfish, I know, but that's how I feel now. Yeah, my mother made it to 92, and her kid sister saw 95, but how many people actually do? If five 65-year-old American males have a joint birthday bash, only one of them will be blowing out 90 candles.Those are the odds...a 20% chance.
Just want to be still here for the Breaking Nooze that will have me shouting with unbridled joy, turning somersaults, and dancing naked (or nearly so) on my front lawn. Then I can go out with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.
It sounds sort of like Neil; after a head injury or ingestion of intoxicants. It takes more than one read to appreciate how bad it is.
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