We're Training Students to Write Worse and to Use AI to Prove They're Not Robots(techdirt.com)
techdirt.com
We're Training Students to Write Worse and to Use AI to Prove They're Not Robots
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/06/were-training-students-to-write-worse-to-prove-theyre-not-robots-and-its-pushing-them-to-use-more-ai/
4 comments
Your math teacher was wrong when he said, "You won't have a calculator" but he wasn't wrong when he implied "You need to learn this."
If children are allowed to use AI as an omnipresent tool, what do you believe students should learn? Lots and LOTS of people would be perfectly happy to outsource all of their thinking to AI as soon as it's possible to do so.
If children are allowed to use AI as an omnipresent tool, what do you believe students should learn? Lots and LOTS of people would be perfectly happy to outsource all of their thinking to AI as soon as it's possible to do so.
Prompt:
I would like to try a little test. I will give you a short piece of text, and you render it as though it were written by a tenth-grader. Here's the text:
We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI
Response:
That's a fun exercise! Here's the headline rewritten in a tenth-grade voice:
Schools Are Making Kids Write Bad on Purpose to Show They're Human, But It's Actually Making Them Use AI More
We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI
Response:
That's a fun exercise! Here's the headline rewritten in a tenth-grade voice:
Schools Are Making Kids Write Bad on Purpose to Show They're Human, But It's Actually Making Them Use AI More
The original title is:
> We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI
> We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI
You can't stay still, it doesn't matter that you think this is worse than it was - it just is.
We need to teach kids from like kindergarten how to use AI in their lives - not for specific tasks, but as a tool that is omnipresent in their lives.
I'm a millennial, I had my math teacher give me the "you won't have a calculator in your pocket" speech - but I do tho, 100% of the time, he couldn't have been more mistaken if he tried.
Why are so many millenials acting like my math teacher??