You Are Not the Author

Framing our interactions with AI:

Generating a painting with AI makes us a painter as much as hiring a painter does.

Generating an essay with AI makes us a writer as much as hiring a writer does.

Asking AI to solve a problem makes us a problem solver as much as asking someone else to solve it does.

Using AI to generate work doesn’t make us the creators of that work. It makes us collaborators. The level of our contribution depends on the effort and creativity we bring to the process.

We need to ensure students understand this distinction so they don’t mistakenly say:

"I wrote this" when they ask AI to write an essay. "I solved this" when they ask AI to solve a math problem. "I created this" when they ask AI to generate an image.

That said, if we engage with AI thoughtfully by analyzing its outputs and learning from them we could improve our skills over time, in the same way that reading many books can help us become better writers.