The AI-Education Death Spiral a.k.a. Let the Kids Cheat

Summary

This essay first appeared in my newsletter. Sign up here if interested in Unf^cking Education. Your kid didn’t write their essay last night. ChatGPT did. And that might be the most honest thing happening in school today. They’re copying essays from AI, running them through “humanizing” tools, and handing in work they’ve barely read. They’re having AI listen to lectures so they don’t have to. They’re sneaking AI via their mobile phones into tests. They’re using ChatGPT for everything from math homework to history essays to college applications. And they should be. To be clear, I’m not advocating for AI in real learning. AI is only useful right now as a stress test as it reveals how hollow adolescent work has become. If it pushes schools toward offering work with relevance, impact, and agency and away from hopeless busywork (“When will I ever use this?”), that is a win. Because AI isn’t the problem. It’s just a light revealing how fake and pointless school has become. The Death Spiral Has Already Begun Walk into any high school classroom. A majority of the work is written by AI. Everyone knows. Most say nothing. Teachers pretend to grade. Students pretend to write. It’s as much about learning as taking your shoes off at the airport is about security. Teachers and professors acknowledge it is rampant, but there is little they can do as evidenced by this post. The author of this post ended it with this humorous conclusion. So yeah. ChatGPT is my best student now. It hands in perfect work, never complains, and never asks for an extension. And the worst part? I think I like it better. And as highlighted above, this is “every single paper”, i.e., this isn’t a few bad apples. Parents who found their daughter cheating on multiple assignments heard: “Everyone is doing this” and that it’s the only way to stay competitive. McCabe’s research confirms this: once cheating becomes normalized and the system loses legitimacy, defection becomes the dominant strategy. This is the class...