Essay Argues AI Writing Tools Can Displace the Learning Process

Summary

In this essay, the author argues that students should not use large language models such as ChatGPT to prepare college writing assignments. The case is not about whether AI can produce impressive text, nor does the essay examine environmental costs or the legal and ethical questions around training data; it focuses on what education loses when reading and writing are outsourced. The author treats reading as a way to learn how writing is made: unlike watching films or listening to music, written texts expose their construction and can be read at a pace chosen by the reader, with skimming, rereading, and reflection shaped by individual experience and disciplinary knowledge. Reading also makes a shared text personal in different ways, while writing tries to make an individual thought shareable. Drawing on Eric Hayot, the author presents writing not simply as a container for ideas formed beforehand, but as part of thinking itself, since drafting, revising, and seeing how another person interprets a text can clarify what one means. The essay uses Bernard Stiegler’s idea of “proletarianization” to describe skills and know-how being externalized into machines, drawing parallels with nail guns, GPS navigation, and automated kitchen equipment. It acknowledges the convenience of such tools, but argues that relying on them can replace developing the underlying skill with learning how to use the tool. The author sees AI summaries and first drafts as a newer version of this process: they divide supposedly mechanical work from creativity, though repetition and basic practice can be where ideas emerge. Examples include a Samsung ad for summarizing meeting notes and a Google Gemini ad in which a father has AI write a letter for his daughter; the essay argues that the act of writing the letter is itself its point. The author concludes that AI may improve a finished product, but cannot substitute for the reading and writing process that constitutes education.