So long, ChatGPT! 🦶🏼👊🏼💥
aka 'I love your imperfect sentences!'
‘Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for ChatGPT!’
The whole world may well cheer and applaud, I’d rather stay silent.
I’m not saying ChatGPT is a bad thing. It’s only a tool. Like a hammer. And just like a hammer, it can help you or hurt you, depending on how you use it.
ChatGPT is a great search engine. It saves time. It gives answers to all sorts of questions within seconds. It debugs code. It composes music. It generates art. It solves math problems. It brainstorms ideas. It does your homework and writes essays.
Here it is again, in case you’ve missed it:
It does your homework and writes essays!
‘Perfect!’ a student might think.
Now, please, think twice.
Up until recently, I used ChatGPT on a daily basis. I know exactly what it can do in my field of work. And I can easily recognise when someone’s using it. When it comes to studying English, I’ve noticed extremely bad consequences of using AI.
To illustrate my point, let me tell you my own story:
I heard of AI and dipped a toe in the water, naturally. It was love at first sight (surprise, surprise!). Life was all sunshine and rainbows. ChatGPT could do incredible things and save me tons of time.
Or it appeared so.
I noticed something interesting soon enough.
The work I produced before AI, using nothing but my brain, was far more exciting and fun than the work I created during my ChatGPT obsession.
The sentences polished by uncle AI were perfect, indeed. But also bland. Soulless. Boring. Yuk.
Here's what happens when I use ChatGPT:
a) I write a mediocre text without using a quarter of my imagination and brain power.
b) AI polishes my crappy sentences.
c) I think “Wow! Good job, me! What a great text you’ve produced.”
d) I never put any effort into remembering the nice polished language AI uses. Why should I? It’ll do the same great job tomorrow.
e) I write another mediocre text.
Okay, you get the picture. Spinning in the vicious circle.
My brain took a nap. There was no need to use it, really.
In a nutshell, here's what happened: I took the power away from my brain.
If you believe that ChatGPT is helping you learn, think again. Based on my experience, it couldn’t be further from the truth. ChatGPT hasn’t done me any good when it comes to improving my English.
One good thing that came out of my relationship with ChatGPT is that it now takes me a second to recognise when someone is using it.
It would be great if I actually DID use the AI tool to learn something. But I never do. Perhaps you’re different. However, I’ve noticed that my students who use AI tools do not benefit from them either. Their language skills become rusty, and their language muscles atrophy.
Taking everything into consideration, here’s the decision I’ve made:
Everything I do needs to be by me alone. No AI to give me ideas or polish my texts. However imperfect my sentences are, it's going to be just me and my good old dictionary.
I want my work to scream: THERE'S NO WAY AN AI COULD HAVE DONE IT LIKE THIS!
Promise to do the same?
I love your imperfect sentences!
They are a perfect starting point for leveling up.
Hugs!
Jelena