By Audrey Cabaltica
On my first day of high school, all my teachers in all classes passed out a syllabus of strict policies against the use of Artificial Intelligence. It caught my attention because I wondered, were that many people really using AI that our school had to make a whole policy against it?
The policy stated that any use of AI would automatically result in a zero. But how would they know AI was used? What if a student’s work is coincidentally similar to AI results?
I love writing and have been writing since elementary school. So whenever I was given a writing assignment, I would be eager and confident to get it done and I would get a good grade.
However, teachers think students in my generation can’t think for themselves and aren’t capable of producing complex, meaningful pieces of work.
AI checker
In Lit class, my teacher uses a site to crosscheck the students’ writing to make sure we didn’t use AI. So when my teacher sees big sentences, they think, “Students aren’t smart enough to write this. This was written by AI.”
To pass the AI checker, I now have to make sure my sentences don’t sound too complex and my words aren’t too descriptive. I often have to search up synonyms for a big word to find a simpler one so I don’t sound too smart.
In elementary and middle school, I was taught to write using certain sentence frames and structures. Apparently, those sentence frames are commonly used by AI. Because of this, I have to change my whole writing style and format just so I won’t get flagged for using AI.
So now, to escape AI detection, I’ve been struggling to sound like a “human” in my schoolwork, especially in Literature.
How to sound human
One Lit assignment was to find three themes in a novel and form theme statements. The themes couldn’t just be one word answers like “change”, it had to be a sentence like, “People change the older they get”.
I really struggled with this assignment, not because I couldn’t find themes, but because I couldn’t find a way to make my sentences sound human. I had easily found and created three theme statements and written them down, but when I read them back they sounded like they came from AI.
I had found very common themes that could be found in everyday life, so I knew it would be easy to ask AI to write a theme statement for them. I had to ask my mom for a different way to say them, but it ended up sounding even more like it was written by AI.
I ended up almost completely overhauling my original, complex sentences into simple, basic sentences. I got a full score on that assignment, not only because my themes were thoughtful, but because my writing was scanned as only 7% AI.
Why I can’t sound 100 percent human
Of course, it’s impossible to get a 0% AI score because no sentence from a human is an original sentence. Ideas are always spreading and being reused. For example, there are many books with the same idea as Harry Potter, but the characters and storylines are changed. It’s hard to come up with a completely original idea. And yet, teachers expect students to write without using the same words as AI.
For my Lit Final, we had to write an essay in class but we could prepare our thesis statements beforehand. I spent a long time forming my statements because I was scared they sounded too much like AI. This Finals essay was 35% of my grade and would be scanned for AI use. I couldn’t risk lowering my grade just because my work sounded like a robot. So, I ended up dumbing down my vocabulary and keeping things simple.
The day of the Final, my teacher walked around the classroom and one by one checked everyone’s thesis statements to make sure they sounded dumb enough that a student like me could write it. She took away one of my classmate’s paper and claimed she could tell he didn’t write his thesis statements and AI did. I don’t know if that’s true, but it was unfair and offensive that she thought we were not capable of writing well.
We’re all AI Suspects
As we wrote our Final essay on our laptops, my teacher walked around the classroom to make sure none of us were on any other tabs, specifically Chat GPT. She even opened our documents on her computer and watched us type in real time. If we paused typing for just a bit, she assumed we switched tabs and had asked AI to write for us.
This stressed me out because I usually stop writing for a bit when I need to think of what to say next. So when I had to pause, I made it clear I wasn’t on any other tabs by raising my hands up to scratch my head.
As I wrote, I kept having to delete and rewrite sentences since I thought they sounded too complex for freshmen writing level. I wracked my brain to come up with simpler synonyms since I couldn’t use an online thesaurus. My writing ended up sounding too simplistic and not at all like me, but it sounded dumb enough that AI couldn’t have written it.
Free to write
It really annoys me that I have to go through all this effort to change how I naturally write just because AI writes similarly. I want to be able to write how I please without the worry of being scanned for AI use and the risk of getting a low grade.
Teachers’ expectations of students are way too low and not accurate at all. They think just because a students’ work is well-written then it could only be written by Chat GPT.
Students are capable of so much more. Just because my writing is complicated doesn’t mean it was done by AI. I should be able to write freely, no matter how much like AI it sounds.
ChatGPT response to the prompt “how to sound human in writing”