Has GenAI killed the college essay?

It’s not that students were better writers before the advent of GenAI. 

In fact, I had helped many friends with their Statement of Purpose (SoP) as they applied for their Masters’ in the US. But even with the writing part sorted, we still struggled. 

Why is this? 

Writing is hard. The hook doesn’t fall into your lap. Ideas don’t come organized. The facts don’t fit into a narrative. Emotions don’t translate into words. Irrelevant thoughts intrude like unwelcome guests who refuse to leave.

At each step, the writer must make choices. The choice to accentuate certain parts, while willfully ignoring some. The choice to struggle with the inexpressible until it submits itself to articulation. Even when it’s all done, it’s still the first draft. A careful review will show weaker joints that need connection. Where the sequence doesn’t roll. 

A few iterations later, you've got it ready: the essay. Or so you think. Or you’ve finally grasped the truth in Leonardo Da Vinci’s: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

Significantly, the process of writing changes your mind. You discover something anew. 

What makes for a great writer? 

In REWORK, Jason Fried asks businesses to “hire great writers”.

Why? 

Sounds legit. Just that the book was first published in 2010.

Long before 2022 when ChatGPT took the writing world by storm. I wonder what Fried thinks about writing as a function today. 

I’ve lost count of people who assert that writing as a skill is not worth much today. Especially when managers are able to write elaborate internal emails in a jiffy. When product marketers are able to stitch together sales collateral all by themselves. 

Are college essays dead?

That’s the question essayist Stephen Marche grappled with in a piece published on ‘The Atlantic’. 

He writes: “Practical matters are at stake: Humanities departments judge their undergraduate students on the basis of their essays. They give Ph.D.s on the basis of a dissertation’s composition. What happens when both processes can be significantly automated? Going by my experience as a former Shakespeare professor, I figure it will take 10 years for academia to face this new reality: two years for the students to figure out the tech, three more years for the professors to recognize that students are using the tech, and then five years for university administrators to decide what, if anything, to do about it.”

Why are students required to write essays? Not because there ever was paucity of information. Certainly not because they hoped the student would surpass the greats in expressing wisdom. 

It’s to assess their ability to think through things, and communicate their point of view in a clear, compelling and organized fashion. 

Writing is an integral part of how many students learn. It’s how students learn new things, and discover what they truly think. 

It's a familiar phenomenon: a writer begins with one mindset, but by the time the draft is finished, their perspective has changed. Sometimes, the characters they’ve created start to develop voices of their own, steering the story in unexpected directions.

By removing the creative struggle from the writing, GenAI is capable of deeply affecting how we think. No amount of prompt engineering, however fine-tuned, can truly reflect one’s innermost voice. 

Writing on a blank page is how you strengthen your cognitive muscles. The only way out of this creative mess is through it. 

As author Ted Chiang puts it: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.” He adds that the hundreds of small choices we make as writers are just as important as the initial conception. 

It’s what calculators did to math 

A contrarian thought is that GenAI is changing writing the way calculators changed mathematics. Initially, use of calculators at schools and universities were met with objections too. Today, nobody bats an eyelid when students use it for even basic calculations.

According to a BigThink article, “The University of Passau researchers think that ChatGPT should not be viewed as a cheating tool but rather as “the new calculator,” which took a lot of the grunt work out of math. Students should be extensively taught to write in class but then eventually permitted to utilize ChatGPT once they have attained sufficient mastery. They can then correct, stylize, and hone the AI’s work.”

Far from killing essays, a few students think GenAI could even resurrect it: “In their essays, some students reflected on the usefulness of GPT-3 as a brainstorming tool.  These students saw the AI as a sort of “collaborator” or “coach,” and some wrote about how GPT-3 made suggestions they hadn’t thought of themselves. In that sense, GPT-3 stood in for the feedback students might get from peer review, a visit to the writing center, or just talking with others about ideas.” 

I get their standpoint. 

For most, writing isn’t a core skill or job focus. It’s not why they get paid. GenAI may seem like a tool that levels the writing field. So, why the inordinate focus on something that’s just one piece of the skill stack. 

However, with writing, I still think it’s different.

Google recently aired, and quickly pulled, a Gemini ad during the Paris Olympics. It featured a father using AI to write a fan letter for his daughter. Viewers found it unsettling; one media professor called it “one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen.”

Wouldn’t you feel unsettled if the email you received from a friend was GenAI-produced? It’s not the outcome, it’s that lack of effort that hurts us most. 

With writing, it does feel different. Isn't it?

Closing Notes

As far as my professional commitments go, I have no choice but to accept the elephant in the room: GenAI. 

But for my personal writing, I still hesitate to use GenAI. Probably because being a writer is central to my identity.

I chanced upon author and science journalist Anil Ananthaswamy's LinkedIn post that put words to my thoughts. 

“These days most writers, including me, get asked: "Will you use AI to help you write?" My answer is: No. Not because I'm inherently against the idea, but because it undercuts the very reason I became a writer. I did so to pay attention to the world of ideas and experience the indescribable feeling of putting your thoughts into words as precisely and poetically as possible. Even if what I'm writing about is machine learning and AI.”

To each, his own. 

Meanwhile, college professors are turning to blue books to ensure students write their essays by hand, under supervision, rather than using AI tools.