Can AI Replace Humans?
As artificial intelligence continues to advance, concerns have arisen about its role in writing. While AI can assist in generating passages and analyzing data, it lacks the critical thinking skills of human writers and historians. Because of this, AI is not likely to replace writing entirely and cannot be considered a true historian.
The application of AI into writing tasks has been met with both praise and criticism. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Deepseek can produce essays and other texts at advanced levels. However, AI-generated text often lacks originality, raising concerns about its impact on the critical thinking skills of its users.
Artificial intelligence analyzes patterns in data, which means it can copy writing styles and generate text based on existing information. This means that it cannot engage in original thought or produce its own creative work.
According to an MIT study, students that use AI tools like ChatGPT displayed weaker neural engagement and lower performance in critical thinking tasks compared to those who did not use any tools. This shows that relying on AI and chat bots can sabotage the development of essential cognitive skills. (https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/)
Additionally, work produced by AI can have many flaws, especially regarding historical accuracy. Because it gathers information from sources all across the internet, it is unable to detect factors such as bias that can cause data to be misleading. For example, AI might incorrectly cite sources or fabricate events that never occurred. These AI hallucinations can lead to a misrepresentation of historical events and mislead users. On the other hand, historians cite primary sources, consider multiple perspectives, and account for most possibilities. AI lacks the ability to perform certain complex tasks and can only be a complement to human work.
Even though AI can serve as a tool to assist writers and historians, it cannot replace the aspects of creativity, critical thinking, and depth that humans possess. Human writers bring personal experiences and emotions into their work, creating stories that others can relate to.
In conclusion, AI has the potential to enhance writing by fixing common mistakes or speeding up the editing process, rather than acting as a substitute for original ideas. It cannot replicate the depth of human thought and understanding. Writers and historians should view AI as a tool that can aid their work, but maintain their role to create their own work.