“The trouble with computers is that all they give you is answers.”
Pablo Picasso1
I would like to say upfront that ChatGPT was not involved in the making of this article. There will be no cute reveal towards the end, and no paragraphs that I’ve elicited from the bot. If you find the prose bland and the thinking derivative, I’m afraid that’s down to me.
Apparently, all the smart people now have ChatGPT as a permanently open tab. Maybe I’ll join them - it’s certainly fun to play with - but right now, I find ChatGPT useful simply as an idea. It’s like a competitor that I’ve internalised, somewhere between editor, coach, and conscience. That’s fine, it seems to say about every piece I write, but are you sure I couldn’t have written that? What are you bringing to the party?
It’s a question worth asking of any piece you read, too, including and especially op-ed columns on AI and education. In recent months there has been much commentary on how ChatGPT and its successors should change the way we think about schools, and it has had the distinct flavour of a bot trained on future-of-education boilerplate. You know the kind of thing:
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