I know a couple professionals who are happy with what they can tell AI to do for them that helps them complete tasks more quickly. One has it summarize the key points in emails or other documents that he created himself to use in a new document he is drafting. And he can refocus his request to get successively better and more refined responses from it.

The other professional who is happy with what AI can do for him is manipulating and reconstructing a website. He tells AI to do the computer programming so he doesn’t have to write the programming language. And if it isn’t quite the way he wants it to look, he refines his instructions to AI until it gets the look and function on the website that he wants.

I see value in those uses of AI. The human is asking for, refining their instructions, and eventually getting the result they had hoped for to use as they intend. It is all their original work with technology assisting them.

What does a tutor offer that AI cannot provide a student?

The use of AI to summarize researched texts, organize essays, or review and refine essay drafts are tasks I don’t think that AI does well—at least in some respects. I say that, because every time I research how to use AI or what are good uses for AI, the description always includes the caveat that “AI makes mistakes or sometimes hallucinates [creates information that isn’t in the text], so always check its responses for accuracy.”

That says to me that AI is unreliable. Why would I waste my time getting a summary from AI and then take the time to double check that the information AI presented me is accurate from the text? I fear that too many inexperienced writers won’t take the time to review for accuracy and, rather, accept what AI has given them as though it is fact or correct.

AI can’t feel. So it misses the nuanced feelings of the connotations of the words in a text.

From an article I read recently in the NY Times, a college professor said many colleges are now requiring students to hand write in blue books in class timed writings in order to ascertain what the student really knows and can communicate in clear and well-structured essays in response to a prompt. He said the reason is because what students submit that they researched and drafted out of class is too often AI generated. The student too often has not read the articles or books, has not gleaned the significant information, has not crafted their own position about the topic, has not organized their essay, nor explained how the evidence cited from the sources supports their position. So instructors and institutions must adapt to find other ways to examine or test each student’s knowledge and skill in their subject area.

I don’t like AI because I love to read and figure out what a writer is saying. I like analyzing texts myself. I don’t accept what other people say unless they can support their ideas with evidence. I trust my own knowledge and skills of analysis to understand a text and find key material to use in my own writing as source material that supports my ideas or reveals to me that my thinking is in error and I need to change my thinking.

If a student reads the sources that AI might help them find—though there might be better sources than the ones AI selects—if the student does the analysis and draws their own conclusions, then their writing will demonstrate the depth of their knowledge about the subject. That’s what instructors have used research papers to do for decades—maybe even for centuries. A student increases their knowledge and skill in thinking and writing by doing this process themselves.

The question remains: will students rely on AI to draft their essays and not come to tutors to help them learn the process, review their drafts and suggest where and how they can refine their skills to craft essays into masterpieces?

The Wyzant students I work with all are eager to improve their own skill and ability to craft powerful essays or other types of writing themselves. Likewise, the tutor.com students who submit essays or request live sessions want the tutor to find places they can improve their essays. The vast majority of students I’ve worked with are eager to learn how to improve their own skills as well as this particular essay.

Sometimes I suspect a draft I receive to review is AI generated or a cutting and pasting of AI material because it lacks unity and coherence. Or it is a compilation of general—often surface knowledge—about the topic with no depth or synthesis of sources to reveal the nuances or complexities of that topic with few or no applicable examples the writer should have included. Other times there may be a compilation of source material with in text citations, but the draft lacks some of the essential elements of an essay—introduction, thesis statement, transitions, topic sentences that claim key ideas of the writer’s position on the topic in each body paragraph, or a conclusion that draws the key ideas into a summary that reveals discoveries the writer has made while grappling with the topic and the sources they found.

I wish I knew how to convince every student that I tutor that doing the research, analysis and drafting work is difficult and very rewarding—worth doing for themselves.