Ted Heintz & Jared Perlmutter–

“Our goal is to foster a lifelong passion for learning, understanding, and service in an ever-changing world,” says the RCDS mission statement. Our “ever-changing world” is changing fast, and if RCDS wants to keep up with it, then we might need to see a shift in the ways we teach sooner than we think. If we truly care about instilling a lifelong passion for learning, rather than just inputting and spitting out information, maybe AI can give us some ideas about how to inspire creativity and passion for learning. Ask yourself, is the current model of our high school education more of a hurdle to clear to get to college or a breeding ground for fertile curious, life-long learners like RCDS intends. 

Most school assignments like research papers, written homework, and busy work can be done in seconds with AI, which raises the obvious questions: what do we value more– getting an assignment done quickly or learning the material in the process? The existence of new programs, such as ChatGPT, has reminded us of an essential question about education: What do we value in our education?

Is an A the most important thing to students? Is it that letter next to our names on a gradebook all that really matters?

During a quick discussion between student editors (Isabel Tiburcio and me, Jared Perlmutter), the curiosity in us wanted to know how far one could take AI’s power. Could it get a student through all of high school? Could English and history essays be “contracted out” to our new “AIde”? What about this month’s January Rye Crop issue, whose deadline was approaching and articles were yet to be finished? 

We walked into Mr. Heintz’s office with a controversial idea in mind. “There is a way to get the paper out fast, but we don’t know if you are going to like it.” 

Perlmutter explained that new artificial intelligence programs could now do everything from write a college level paper to a Drake song. So why not incorporate it into the next edition of Crop, added Tiburcio. To my surprise, Heintz explained that artificial intelligence had been a topic in a recent English Department meeting. In fact, our English teachers had been working on differentiating between the writing of a student and that of artificial intelligence (produced by ChatGPT). At first try the teachers had some challenges distinguishing among the AI pieces and the student piece, but after playing with the program, the RCDS English teachers and many other people from around the world, started to see flaws in the program’s expression. Mainly, ChatGPT struggles to write with much rhetorical flair or delve deeply into a given topic. Go ahead and play with it and see how much its responses change in terms of syntax and depth. AI does not yet have the creativity of expression of a top tier writer. The RCDS English teacher and the RCDS student disagreed about the value of this new “toy” (Heitnz’s word) and this new “tool” (Permutter’s word). 

Many articles have been recently written about AI’s potential value as a writing tool or an internet toy. And new powerful AI-detector programs are coming out to help educators fight what one might call “AI-plagiarism.” We recommended that you spend some time thinking about the potential added value or added distraction that AI may bring to education. Yes, a computer writing your essay may save a student time and may even help that student learn more about a subject by adding details to an essay a student had not previously considered, but is that the best way to learn? Do we even need teachers and classrooms if a computer can do all the work that the teacher and student can do? If the pandemic taught us anything, it has taught us the value of face-to-face interaction in education. We must now consider what we want out of our education at RCDS or elsewhere. Developing critical thinking skills are certainly at the top of that list. Do we want to allow computers to do that for us? Do we want to ignore the value and art of writing because we have ChatGPT to write for us? Do RCDS students even care about these questions or do the ends justify the means? 

A lot of questions arise from the advent of something like ChatGPT. So the editors of Crop pose a challenge to you readers? Have you considered the role artificial intelligence may have on your education? This issue of Crop will ask you to do just that while having some fun along the way. Can you determine which of the articles in this issue are AI-generated and which are of a student’s creation?  To demonstrate the power (or flaws) of artificial intelligence, we had one of our main stories written by artificial intelligence, and the other by one of your editors-in-chief, Isabel Slippen. In fact, we put a few articles in this issue that were written by the AI, and a few written by students. Can you tell which one is which?

For an in-depth key, click here.