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Opinion

AI Against the Humanities

The humanities demand focused attention on the original object, the thing itself, not simplified versions of it.
AI Against the Humanities
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Commentary

For college teachers in those fields whose instruction is all about reading and writing, the advent of AI is a disaster. They’ve never faced a challenge like this before. They assign novels, plays, artworks, treatises, and historical tracts, but students don’t have to study them anymore, not carefully. When AI can provide a handy summary of the books, which the student can regurgitate more or less sufficiently on the midterm, why read them in full? If short essays and research papers are required and AI can produce them with but a few tailored requests from the kids, why write those pages themselves, especially as AI gets better and better at disguising its involvement?

Mark Bauerlein
Mark Bauerlein
Author
Mark Bauerlein is an emeritus professor of English at Emory University. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, the TLS, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.