Fully Automated Luxury Writing
AI text generation is phenomenally powerful. Having processed 175 billion values, it is able to generate articles, essays, blogs – almost anything. This is the beginning of automation for many “intellectual” jobs, like journalism. So far, though, the AI companies selling their services for 30–60 US dollars a month target corporate writers. AI is already good at writing social media ads, about pages, and LinkedIN profiles. For corporate writing, the tech can be used to produce multiple versions. These can target seperate audiences based on demographic data. Soon, advertisers will use a specific AI writing bot for each unique customer.
The implications for education are shocking. As scholars of pedagogy have argued, AI is best at the exact style of education that students are currently trained in. AI can already generate text to meet specific genre conventions. It already writes with flawless grammar. This is why these scholars are calling for education to adjust. They argue that teaching should focus on what humans still have a comparative advantage in: creating new ideas. For presently, at least, AI text generation needs to be sparked by some original insight.
This approach sees writers working in dialogue with AI. Writers enter their initial thoughts to generate a response. Having read the output critically, the text is adjusted so the AI can write again. Rather than the automation of writing, this is the automation of aspects of brainstorming and most typing. It is a form of writing as dialogue not just with AI but with the billions of authors the AI has been trained on.
Many take issue with this. Fine, it may be conceded, teach students to write in this new “more productive” way, but schools and universities must still be able to test a student’s own work. AI text generation is not a student’s own work. It is the theft of the ideas of almost everyone else.
This is not, of course, a new problem. What even is an original thought? All creation is social and historical. We learn together, are inspired by each other. Testing for individual skill is but a necessary evil of education as a certification factory. And this is a necessary sorting tool for capitalists wanting to mitigate the risks of hiring workers they have never met before.
But the arguments of progressive education theorists have their own flaws. By claiming that education should focus on what humans still have an advantage in (creating new ideas), it is implied that when AI eventually surpasses humans on this front, we should stop writing all together. When we have no comparative advantage in writing at all, we should shut up and just consume what our overlords email us.
Both arguments – those that want to keep AI out of the classroom, and those that want to embrace it – are wedded to neoliberal commonsense. Education is viewed only as as a training ground to teach workers the skills needed to create commodities. The ironic thing is that AI text generation represents the exact automation that will render this “pragmatic” and “common sense” approach to education obsolete.
When there are no capitalist jobs for humans, it will be counterproductive to condition students to want to be productive workers who create commodities. This will only set students up for failure. What will be needed – even now – is an education focused on guiding students in the creative pursuit of meaningfulness. How can humans find meaningfulness when we no longer have essential tasks to perform? This will be the core existential question that the society of fully automated luxury communism must ask. Indeed, it should be one of the central questions we ask today. Instead, the planet is being destroyed in an insatiable thirst for profits, and elites never stop to ask why.
In a model that helps students create meaning in a worker-less world, grading individual abilities is absurd. So inferior will all humans be to AI that there won’t be any point comparing ourselves to each other. A young student will ask their mentor:
“Do we use AI text generation or not?”
They will be told: “No one cares. Chill. Take your time. Does the text you produce mean something? Who for?”
In response to the increasing automation of all of our jobs, we should not simply wallow in depression, and stop learning how to create. That is the capitalist logic, which only teaches our students because it is a rational investment for profit making. The alternative is to continue teaching, teaching all skills, but for a different purpose: the creation of meaningfulness.
We should embrace each other’s efforts not as the work of individuals but of people living in the shared meaning created through the social relations of many overlapping communities. We should embrace the fact that no one knows for sure why we are here, or if there even is a meaningful purpose for our lives. We should use AI – if we want – to help create new meaning, new projects to work on, new art. The last thing we should do is subject students to surveillance, force them through hoops, and certify them as productive wage labourers. We should try instead to create citizens that will build and thrive in fully automated luxury communism.
