As schools and teachers have tried to pressure their students to stay away from AI use, they have recapitulated many of the same old arguments against cheating in its traditional forms.
We English teachers have railed against shortcuts since CliffsNotes first reared their "study guide" heads back in 1958. Then the internet begat SparkNotes and its ilk. And it was always a mistake to frame the argument as some sort of moral or ethical issue. "You're a bad person if you cheat on this assignment," is not a useful message for young humans for many reasons, not the least of which is that they hear variations on "You're a bad person if..." a lot.
As it turns out, the best arguments against old school cheating are equally valid against new school high tech cheating, or just plain AI "augmentation."
Anything worth doing is worth doing yourself
"I would really like to kiss this highly engaging and exciting human being in front of me, so I am going to get someone else to do it and tell me what it was like," said nobody, ever.
You get the most out of life's experiences by, you know, experiencing them. You could sit in a cave somewhere and let your tech feed you a regular summary of what is going on outside, but what would be the point? You find your best self, you learn how to be fully human in the world, by being in the world.
Too many adults, and far too many adults who work in schools, feed the narrative that students are in some sort of holding pattern, that their real lives in the real world will start further down the road. That's just not true. Your life is going on right now, even if you are not yet an adult. So experience it first hand. And yes, that includes the work that you've been given to do in school.
Of course, "anything worth doing" is doing some heavy lifting here. That part falls on the teachers. It's part of their job to make sure they are bringing students together with things that are, in fact, worth doing; then they have the task of making the "worth doing" case to students.
Lying is corrosive
Everyone has seen the memo explaining that lying is wrong. But it's also important to understand that lying is corrosive and self-damaging. And it's nearly impossible to cheat without lying. And lying is corrosive.
Lying builds barriers in relationships; in particular, it ruins trust, and without trust as a foundation, it is difficult to build or sustain any sort of relationship with other human beings. Lying creates a brutal sort of isolation, in which you alone are the only person who knows the truth of your own story. That kind of isolation is the usual root of the whole existential angst thing anyway, but to add the barriers that come with lying just makes it so much worse.
As I told my students a gazillion times, life is too short to put your name to a lie.
Protect your brain
You do not build muscles by hiring someone else to lift weights in your name. Students are developing their minds, strengthening their brains. There is a natural tendency to draw back from the friction and pain involved, but that's how you build things.
Your brain is the toolbox that will hold every tool you'll need to make your way through the world, both personally and professionally. The more, better tools you collect, the more choices you will have in life. We know that offloading cognitive work to AI is not good for people. It's not good for adults and degrades the tools in their mental toolboxes, but for young humans who are supposed to be accumulating those tools the effects could be even worse-- the absence of necessary tools as they enter the adult world.
It is becoming increasingly clear that AI is not for amateurs, that it is only useful for people who are already knowledgeable about the field in question. Students are not those people.
You are going to need your brain your whole life, and your school years are the chance to pack it with as many bits of knowledge and skill you can get your mental mitts on. Do not use AI to shortchange that process.
This requires the kind of long term thinking that young humans does not always come easily to young humans. But we adults have to keep reminding them that the work is not to generate an assignment that you can hand in tomorrow, but to wrestle with the work in ways that will help them accumulate the knowledge and skills that will help them move through the world. Speedruns and shortcuts will not help with that.
Don't avoid cheating or cutting corners or just getting a little extra help because it's Very Naughty. Avoid all of these with either AI or old school methods, because they get in the way of the work of building your self and your life. That should your measure in all things-- is this a tool for helping you grow and live, or a means of avoiding engaging with growth and life? Don't choose the latter.
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