Hello and welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where two philosophers, professors, friends, and writers talk about what our discipline

has to offer all number of discussion topics.

I'm David Pena Guzman.

And I'm Ellie Anderson.

For centuries, writing, especially essay writing, has been a key feature of Western educational

systems.

Students are asked what they think about

a particular topic, right? And then they write about it in an essay. But a lot of people in our

profession these days worry that this is going away thanks to a new technology, chat GPT.

I've been seeing op-eds like the end of the essay. forums where professors talk to each

other about best teaching methods are worrying a lot about the future of essay writing in classes.

And this is coming from the fact that the new technology of chat GBT is leading many students

simply not to do one of the things that schools are meant to teach them to do, which is

right. And for those who work in education, the problem is really difficult to navigate,

because on the one hand, we obviously want to give students all the tools and resources that

they might need to succeed. And that could include teaching them how to use these generative AI technologies

that write for them. On the other hand, we're also noticing a very clear breakdown in the

expectations that teachers and students bring to the classroom, where teachers expect students

to write. But nowadays, more and more, students expect not to have to

write their own thoughts because now they have this very tempting technology at their fingertips.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that means a breakdown of trust, right? Where it's really hard to

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