That's a general sentiment from English teachers It faces an onslaught of AI-generated writing in classrooms. When students rely on ChatGpt to write essays, they don't get their brains involved as deeply about the topic as they would have written all of themselves.
Now, it is also a discovery supported by neuroscience research.
New research Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wellesley College, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design found that simply hoping that writers would use AI by providing free governance led to some dark outcomes.
Participants, primarily undergraduate and graduate students, were assigned essays with the support of the assignment, rather than participants who were asked to write for themselves. AI-USERS was far less likely to recall what he wrote and felt less ownership of his job. Independent raters who reviewed the essays found that AI-supported essays lacked individuality and creativity.
However, when participants first wrote their own essays and then used AI to write about the same topic, the results changed. This group of writers showed increased brain activity.
“The fact that timing can be very important when integrating these tools,” said Nataliya Kosmyna, research scientist at MIT Media Lab and lead author of the paper.
If writers spend their time thinking about their topics, gathering their thoughts and turning to generative AI, then using the tools could potentially benefit more, she said. “Maybe you can ask questions and go back and forth. You have your opinion on the topic, you can encourage in different directions.”
This paper is preprinted. In other words, what has not yet been peer-reviewed is not listed in the Academic Journal. And although researchers only collaborated with a small sample of participants, all of them undergraduate, graduate students, or university employees.
Still, the findings may provide important clues as to how generative AI use can short-circumvent the learning process and where it can actually deepen student thinking.
“They're the ones who are studying writing and teaching at Arizona State University,” said Steve Graham, a professor of writing and teaching.
Research has found that writers have less brain activity using ChatGpt.
In this study, the researchers asked 54 participants to write three essays each in three separate sessions, responding to prompts drawn from the SAT College Entrance Examination. They divided participants into different groups.
In the first group, participants could use Open AI's GPT-4o, but wanted to help with the writing process. Second, participants can search the internet and use any website to inform their writing, except for ChatGPT or other large AI models. Participants in the third group were unable to use the research tool. Researchers called the group “for brains only.”
The researchers monitored participant's brain connectivity during tasks via EEG or EEG, a tool that measures brain electrical activity. They also asked participants a series of questions after the task, with independent evaluators (two English teachers and one AI) lined up the essays.
EEG results demonstrated that a group of writers who did not rely on external support had the strongest and broadest neural activity. Groups using ChatGpt had the least activity, while groups searching the web fell somewhere in between.
The brains of writers who worked without research support were illuminated in areas related to coming up with creative ideas, integrating multiple information and self-monitoring. This “emphasized the high internal demand for content generation, planning and revision in the presence of external AIDS,” the researchers wrote. The characteristics of organizing, contouring and modifying thoughts are at the heart of the writing process.
Participants in the ChatGpt group also struggled to remember what they had written. When asked to quote from their essays, 83% of the group were unable to do so. Only 11% of participants in the search engine group and brain-only group failed on the same task.
If AI helps you write it, is it your own essay?
And while almost every brain-only group said they felt their essays were their own, the ChatGpt group wasn't that sure. The group “presented a fragmented, contradictory author's sense of fragmented, contradictory author,” the researchers wrote. “Some participants claimed full ownership, others explicitly deny it, and many participants assigned partial credits to themselves.”
In an evaluation of the essay itself, two English teacher judges wrote that the sentences covered in Ai stood out because “they are close to the full use of language and structure, but at the same time they cannot make personal insights or clear statements.” By comparison, the AI judge could not convey the difference in the essay written with the help of AI.
After participants wrote three essays, the researchers asked everyone about a fourth session with one twist. Those assigned to the Brain-only group had access to ChatGpt, but those who were able to use ChatGpt were initially asked to write as auxiliary. Eight of the original participants completed this fourth session and chose one of the three essay topics they had already written, making them familiar with the subject matter.
When the ChatGpt group switched to writing without support, it did not reach the same level of brain activity as the group that had no access to AI.
However, when the brain-only group switched to using ChatGPT, they saw an increase in brain connectivity.
“From an education perspective, these results suggest that the strategic timing of the introduction of AI tools following initial self-directed efforts may promote involvement and neural integration,” the researchers write.
Students need time to develop writing skills and shape ideas without AI, educators say
For Brett Vogelsinger, a high school English teacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the findings warn that “outsourced too quickly is the biggest risk here.”
Vogelsinger is the author of Artistic AI in writing I incorporated the tools into some of his lessons. Still, he said, “I need some writing time, you and your thoughts and your thoughts.”
This could mean that AI will be incorporated only for revisions, according to Christina Peterson, an English teacher and co-author of Exeter High School in Exeter, New Hampshire. AI in writing workshops with her colleague, an English teacher, Dennis Magliotzi.
If students use AI as their writing partner, Magliozzi said, “You have to show up at the table you wrote first.”
Not only does ASU professor Graham provide students with space to develop original ideas, he also emphasizes the importance of teachers in helping teachers learn to understand writing skills and the writing process.
Even if students come up with their own ideas, he said that if they ask ChatGpt to line up those ideas in their essays for them, they will lose exercise in important writing muscles. “We are not going to learn much about the construction skills of sentences,” Graham said as an example. Writing tends to use more refined syntax Vocabulary rather than oral language – what students need to practice.
Targeted writing guidance also helps students learn how to build their work In a logical and clear way.
Lack of these skills hinders students' ability to write powerful essays. It also makes it difficult to determine whether the content generated by AI is of high quality. When students use ChatGpt as a writing aid, Graham said:
It is not clear how much students need before they make good judgments about the quality of their AI output, said Kosmyna, the study's lead author. She emphasized that the sample in this study was very small. Fifty-four participants completed the first three sessions, with only 18 returning fourth.
For now, it is important for teachers to carefully consider how AI can be used. And she said to listen to their warnings.
“We need to support them and listen to them. We don't just randomly push all our tools under the sun without understanding.”
