AI's Existential Impact on Student Desire and Engagement
TL;DR
- AI is not a calculator but a tool that acts into students' souls, potentially diminishing their capacity for genuine desire and engagement with difficult material.
- Students' attraction to AI tools stems from structural conditions like anxiety and lack of internal purpose, rather than personal vice, necessitating systemic rather than individualistic solutions.
- The digital revolution, by creating a world designed for human mastery, paradoxically results in that world acting back upon and mastering individuals.
- Students may lack the leisure to be moved by meaningful content due to precarious lives, leading them to seek escape through devices and generative AI.
- Genuine intellectual curiosity and engagement, exemplified by students "nerding out" in Greece, represent a powerful counter-force to the passive consumption encouraged by digital tools.
Deep Dive
The increasing adoption of generative AI by students stems not from vice, but from profound structural conditions including anxiety, a lack of internal purpose, and a disconnect from a pre-digital consciousness that valued deep engagement. This shift profoundly impacts their learning and sense of self, moving beyond the technical challenge of cheating to a deeper existential concern about their "souls and longings."
The core issue is that AI is not merely a tool like a calculator, but a force that shapes user consciousness, often by design. Students, growing up in a "total screen world," are already deeply influenced by devices where they are the product, making them susceptible to using AI as an escape from the perceived precarity and difficulty of life and learning. This tendency is exacerbated by a potential lack of internal motivation, as highlighted by the observation that students might not be "moved by really moving stuff" because their lives are structured by constant anxiety and a reliance on digital escape mechanisms. The desire to use AI for assignments is thus a natural extension of seeking to avoid hard work, mirroring the earlier threat of Tetris on TI-83 calculators, but on a far more significant existential level.
Ultimately, the challenge for educators is to address these underlying structural conditions by fostering genuine engagement and a sense of purpose. The successful approach in the classroom involves appealing to what Aristotle termed "earnestness" and "eros"--the innate human desire to know and to strive--rather than simply policing AI use. This requires recognizing that students, even those who appear disengaged, may possess a deep romanticism and capacity for profound intellectual curiosity, as evidenced by their enthusiastic engagement with classical texts in historically significant settings. The implication is that by re-engineering the learning environment to connect with this inherent drive, educators can counteract the homogenizing and self-mastering effects of digital technologies and AI.
Action Items
- Audit student engagement: Identify 3-5 indicators of genuine intellectual curiosity beyond assignment completion (ref: "last romantics" observation).
- Design AI-resistant assignments: Create 2-3 assignment types that require critical thinking and personal synthesis, not just information retrieval.
- Develop student self-awareness module: Outline a brief session (1-2 hours) on how digital tools influence attention and learning habits.
- Measure learning depth: For 3-5 core concepts, assess student understanding via qualitative discussion rather than solely quantitative metrics.
Key Quotes
"I have to like trick myself into thinking in order to get any writing done today. I still have to like kind of re-engineer the crisis, uh, the crisis of the sort of the 147 AM in the library, I need to get this done kind of thing. I've developed some capacity to like trick myself into thinking the crisis is already upon me when it's not. I'm totally sympathetic to it."
The speaker, Matt Dinan, describes his own struggles with procrastination and the need to create artificial urgency to complete tasks. Dinan expresses sympathy for students using AI tools, suggesting their actions stem from similar challenges rather than malice. This highlights a personal connection to the problem of student motivation and engagement.
"Part of my theory of the case as my pal Ezra Klein likes to say for the situation was assuming that it's anxiety and lack of internal sense of purpose and meaning that leads students to use these tools. It's not about vice, right? There are these huge structural conditions that are making it makes sense for them. And so you have to try and address it on that level to the extent that you can."
Matt Dinan posits that student use of AI tools is driven by underlying anxiety and a lack of personal meaning, rather than simple laziness or vice. Dinan argues that these are large-scale structural issues that educators must acknowledge and attempt to address. This frames the problem as systemic rather than individual.
"The phrase of yours that we've used previously that AI is not a calculator. I mean, I was thinking when I was in high school and we got our TI-83s for that calculus class, the big threat was whether we would figure out how to put Tetris on them, right? So they were just like a tool that you could kind of misuse, but it was not like reaching into our souls in a certain way."
The speaker distinguishes AI from previous technological tools like calculators, emphasizing its deeper impact. Unlike a calculator, which was primarily a tool for misuse, AI is presented as something that affects individuals on a more profound, "soul-level" engagement. This comparison underscores the unique nature of AI's influence.
"And so when I was thinking about this big first-year class I was teaching that was kind of this entree to the program, so the students who haven't totally bought in. Part of my theory of the case as my pal Ezra Klein likes to say for the situation was assuming that it's anxiety and lack of internal sense of purpose and meaning that leads students to use these tools. It's not about vice, right? There are these huge structural conditions that are making it makes sense for them. And so you have to try and address it on that level to the extent that you can."
Matt Dinan explains his pedagogical approach, suggesting that student reliance on AI stems from anxiety and a lack of purpose, not inherent vice. Dinan believes these are significant structural issues that educators should aim to address. This perspective shifts the focus from individual failing to broader societal influences.
"And so it turns out that in doing that, that world is just acting into us. So it actually kind of masters ourselves. This is in this really, I think, interesting way, sometimes you get students who are not moved by really moving stuff. Maybe they don't have the leisure to be moved, right? Their lives are structured such that they feel precarious all the time. But certainly the way that they try to escape those feelings is with their phones. And then it's a very natural extension of that problem to then want to use generative AI to escape the hard work of learning."
Matt Dinan reflects on how the digital world, created for human mastery, paradoxically ends up mastering humans. Dinan suggests that students, feeling precarious and lacking leisure, use their phones to escape these feelings, which then naturally extends to using generative AI to avoid the difficulty of learning. This illustrates a cycle of escape facilitated by technology.
Resources
External Resources
Books
- "Closing the American Mind" by Ravalstein - Mentioned in relation to the concept of "Longing Without Souls."
Tools & Software
- TI-83 - Referenced as an example of a calculator that could be misused but did not deeply affect users' souls.
- Generative AI - Discussed as a tool students might use to escape the hard work of learning.
People
- Ezra Klein - Mentioned as a friend who uses the phrase "theory of the case."
- Aristotle - Referenced in the context of the question "by nature, do we actually really desire to know?"
- Jim Shaw - Mentioned as a longtime professor at Georgetown who commented on the title "Souls Without Longing."
- Anton Barbeque - Cited for the idea that the digital revolution created a world that acts back upon and masters ourselves.
Other Resources
- AI is not a calculator - A phrase used to distinguish AI from simpler tools.
- The last romantics - A description given to students who showed deep engagement with historical sites.