Mastodon.art just banned AI art

[highplainsdem]

34. The best way to teach writing is via reading and writing, not by having

students watch AI fill in a formula.

And again, there's no practical way to have AI identify what it's plagiarizing, let alone find some way to compensate the writers, artists and musicians being ripped off. Its use now is unethical.

And unfortunately teachers using AI to "create" may lose sight of how unethical it is.

See this discussion thread on a music forum, the second reply there:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/chatgpt.1166665/

I'm not going to quote that post but you should read it, about a group of teachers discussing students using ChatGPT to cheat. And one teacher of music theory liking song lyrics ChatGPT wrote for her so much that she's tempted to have it write more songs for her to "pass off" as hers.

The relevant words there are "pass off" because it would be fraud. It would be cheating. Because she wouldn't have created the songs. AI would have, from sources she wouldn't even be able to identify.

If a teacher finds it that tempting, how do you expect kids not to try to use it to cheat?

If you want your students to see how humans write, to understand how they create, ask local writers if they'll help. Or check to see if there are any such videos on YouTube, because there probably are. You can't learn writing, as a human, from AI. It can't tell you how it creates.

And btw, formulaic writing isn't something teachers should usually aim for.