How to be Original: A Key Skill in the Age of the A.I. Essay
By Alastair Bonnett
We need to talk about how to be original. I’II get onto why originality matters in the age of A.I. essays in a moment but let’s start with something a little more old school.
I’m talking about all those assessment criteria that college staff often gesture to but which, when you read them, are exercises in the obvious. I have some in front of me from different universities. I read in this one that the highest marks are awarded to work that has ‘insight’ and is ‘excellent’. Another explains that lower grades are given to material that show a ‘weak grasp of concepts’. And so it goes on. No wonder so few students read these benchmarks. But one word jumps out, lurking in the highest bands, where ‘outstanding’ marks are given. That word is ‘original’. Makes an ‘original contribution’, ‘shows originality’, ‘evidence of originality’ – in almost every example I have before me it’s there; it is the key term in explaining why top marks are handed out.
Originality is set up on a golden throne. But how to climb up upon that gilded seat is neither taught nor explained to students. Originality is praised to the skies but the unmissable implication is that it is super difficult and for the few not the many; the top 1 per cent. This is nonsense. It’s no such thing. Anyone can be original.
If you don’t believe me then my new book How to be Original is for you: it’s a step-by-step guide that brings originality within everyone’s grasp.
Originality is learnable. I first realised this 40 years ago. I was a first-year student and I had to deliver a talk on nationalism for one of my seminars. I was terrified, fear constricted my throat and I gabbled through the few minutes allotted to my presentation. Those able to hear any of it would have found out that I’d chosen to focus on nationalism in small island states. My talk was bad, that much was clear, so I was baffled when I got a half-decent mark. ‘Very original’ came the feedback. All I had done was give the set topic an unexpected context.
Something had worked. My modest shift of context had sprinkled stardust on a rubbish heap. It was my first lesson in the fact that originality is not an obscure art or act of genius: it can be simple and it is teachable. There are straightforward techniques that you can master that will transform your work and make it innovative.
We have already learned three things about originality: (a) it’s not beyond you; (b) a shift in context can be enough; (c) keep it simple. If you do one original thing it’s going to have more impact than a cluster of novelties.
Even in the absence of the A.I. revolution this would matter. With the advent of the ‘A.I. academic’ it takes on a new level of urgency. The tech can write good essays; it can combine and draw from a huge data base. But substantive innovation – actually adding to the literature; bringing something new to it - is currently beyond it. Given the importance of originality in awarding the best grades, the implications of this limitation are significant. Originality is one of the ways educators can fight back against the bots.
This is a fast-moving field. To take one example: according to a BBC report, there were 14,443 visits to the ChatGPT site from Cardiff University’s wi-fi networks during the January 2023 assessment period. Just one month before, there were none. A growing number of students are submitting work generated by A.I. and they are getting strong marks in return. Anxiety levels are rising among assessors. In April 2023, Italy became the first Western country to block ChatGPT. It’s like setting a deckchair up on the beach and ordering back the tide. Those waves are already over our heads: A.I. essays are here and, for many students, they’re working.
Going back to unseen exams is one response. The prospect of all those expensive online assessment systems being superannuated by leaking biros and squeaking exam hall chairs might be relished by nostalgics. But exams are terrible at delivering the kind of education students now want and deserve. Universities promise students intellectual excitement and fulfilment, not pen-pushing feats of memory.
Developing the skills of originality is a bigger, better, answer. It is not a magic wand. For one thing, it demands engagement from students and dedicated tuition from staff. You cannot coast along, do the minimum, as either a student or a lecturer, and expect to produce anything original.
Here’s an even bigger challenge. I just wrote that How to be Original offers a ‘step-by-step’ guide to what I called a ‘learnable’ skill. If we can plug these skills into A.I. then originality becomes part of its output. The ultimate goal of work in A.I. is ‘artificial general intelligence’; that means the creation of autonomous intelligence, just as smart as any living thing. In a recent paper on the new GPT-4 version of ChatGPT, Sébastien Bubeck et al note it can ‘solve novel and difficult tasks that span mathematics, coding, vision, medicine, law, psychology and more’. However, their positive take on this is that ‘AI technologies’ can ‘support human agency and creativity’.
It seems, that, so far, ‘human agency and creativity’ will remain essential. A.I. is forcing the issue of originality up the agenda. For too long originality has been lauded and demanded but not taught. It is now on the verge of becoming a key skill for negotiating the era of A.I.. We should not expect any simple solutions. A.I. is a profound challenge. But if it pushes us to expect more of ourselves, to demand that learning is accompanied by innovation, then it may have profound benefits.
Book Details
How to be Original
Alastair Bonnett
September 2023
ISBN: 9781529621839
About the Author
