The ability to write clearly and cogently has been seen as “a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill,” writes Daniel Herman, who teaches humanities at a private school. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can write a competent essay in response to any prompt, could mark the ,end of writing assignments.
Most high school students don’t enjoy writing. He tells them that “basic competence in writing is an absolutely essential skill — whether it’s for college admissions, writing a cover letter when applying for a job, or just writing an email to your boss.”
But the bot can write a decent admissions essay and a usable cover letter, he learned. Future students won’t need to learn grammar, punctuation or sentence structure, and most aren’t interested in going much farther.
[The bots may be able to write a generic, boilerplate cover letter, but all that means is that institutions with functions which require writing skills will create better tests to force people to reveal their aptitude in other ways. Calculators didn’t end the need for math skills, after all. — Ed]
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