Alec Couros recently came to Coquitlam and gave a presentation on “The Promise and Challenges of Generative AI”. In this presentation he had a quote, “Outsource tasks, but not your thinking.”

I just googled it and found this LinkedIn post by Aodan Enright. (Worth reading but not directly connected to the use of AI.)

It’s incredible what is possible with AI… and it’s just getting better. People are starting businesses, writing books, creating new recipes, and in the case of students, writing essays and doing homework. I just saw a TikTok of a student who goes to their lecture and records it, runs it through AI to take out all the salient points, then has the AI tool create cue cards and test questions to help them study for upcoming tests. That’s pretty clever.

What’s also clever, but perhaps now wise, is having an AI tool write an essay for you, then running the essay through a paraphraser that breaks the AI structure of the essay so that it isn’t detectable by AI detectors. If you have the AI use the vocabulary of a high school student, and throw in a couple run-on sentences, then you’ve got an essay which not only AI detectors but teachers too would be hard pressed to accuse you of cheating. However, what have you learned?

This a worthy point to think about, and to discuss with students: How do you use AI to make your tasks easier, but not do the thinking for you? 

Because if you are using AI to do your thinking, you are essentially learning how to make yourself redundant in a world of ever-smarter AI. Don’t outsource your thinking… Keep your thinking cap on!