by Claudia Campbell
I have been in college for six months and have already been assigned hundreds of pages of at-home readings from a few classes alone. Let me make this clear, I am not an English major. I have always had a hard time writing and an even harder time reading, so I understand the dreadfulness of finishing a novel within a week or conceptualizing several philosophical chapters by next class.
The other week in my lab, one of the boys in my group ran the procedure, given data, and instructions through an AI summary generator. Once we were stuck on a question, he offered the generated answer for that problem, only for the TA to let our group know that answer wasn’t even possible.
Now I don’t know the name of the application he used because I try to stay away from AI and am therefore not familiar with any apps other than ChatGPT. I recognize this flaw in my argument, as well as my bias for hating AI. But this example of misinformation is seemingly quite common, as observed in an article written by Temple Professor Seth C. Bruggeman. In the post, he explains his newfound distrust in both his students and AI, as he has had to go through “endless AI-generated nonsense submitted for assignments”,
The advantages of reading are often overlooked, and with the national reading scores declining, the effects AI have on reading must be addressed.
I know I stated that I have trouble reading, and do not typically care for it if I am being honest, but even I have enjoyed a handful of books in my life.
In the summer going into high school, I read the novel We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra and to this day will say it is one of the best pieces of fiction I have ever read. As an experiment, I have gone against my principles and used ChatGPT for the sake of comparison. The AI application did a decent job summarizing the characters and the overall message of the story. What the computerized summary fails to do is mention key points in the plot the author uses to reveal the moral of the story. The generated summary actually included minimal points of the plot, stating equivalent information to that on the back cover.
Creativity and originality are important traits, and reading is a keyway to obtain these.
Reading has so many benefits in addition to these, including critical thinking skills as well as just overall brain-strengthening with vocabulary and comprehension. A major downside of having AI do reading for someone is that “the reading assistances [are] focused on speed and task completion over nurturing developing skills or honing existing ones”, as explained by academic Mark Watkins in an article he wrote on the impacts AI has on reading. You may still get the right answer using AI to summarize a reading, but the work and benefits of reading the given text oneself is completely taken away.
Using AI as a tool for reading may make it easier or faster to complete but eliminates any and all benefits to the reader. Reading is a crucial ability necessary for all aspects of life, and it is vital that we as a society continue to practice this rather than find shortcuts through AI development.
Something I learned from this blog was that AI does not accurately generate answers to mathematical problems such as lab questions and calculator based problems. Something I agree with it the discussion on how using generative AI is not beneficial to students and takes away the experience and capabilities as a student to succeed as a writer.
From this post, I learned that while AI can help summarize readings, it often misses key details and the deeper meaning of a text. I agree that reading is essential for developing critical thinking, comprehension, and creativity, which AI cannot fully replace. I disagree with the idea that it eliminates all benefits to the reader, I think that if used wisely can help you understand some part of the reading you may not understand.
1.) What I learned from this is that AI summaries might give the basics, but they miss a lot of the important details and meaning that make reading actually matter.
2.) I agree with your point that relying on AI to do the reading for you might be easier, but it takes away the skills you build from actually reading, like thinking for yourself and understanding things better.