Hua Hsu is a Bard professor in the humanities and a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he has published report, “The End of the Essay,” on the impact of inexpensive access to Large Language Model chatbots on the behavior of college students. It is understood in his wide-ranging discussion that students who submit papers authored by chatbots are not only cheating (by submitting work not their own) but, more important, short-circuiting their own educations. This has understandably provoked a great deal of hand-wringing among professors and administrative officials.

Lurking at the bottom of Hsu’s inquiry is a question about the purpose of a college career. Are the time and expense justified if the objective is simply to attain a degree, a credential that is convertible into job opportunities? It is clear that at least some students who openly acknowledge that the undergraduate commitment has no other value do perform the assigned work without cheating. It also seems clear that cheating diminishes any other benefits of a “college education” — for it can be an education only to the extent that students do the work.

We shall bear that in mind. It is further understood that this problem is connected somehow to “the humanities.”

The idea of the humanities crystallized in an intellectual climate rather different from our own. Prior to the development of modern psychology, all people were held to be endowed with a universal human nature, comprised of qualities, such as rationality, and complicated by accidents, such as sex, height, hair color, and so on. People were understood to tend instinctively toward the ideal as best they could. The study of human beings was a cataloguing of interesting accidents, as for example heroism, sanctity, or depravity.

The idea of a human essence has not evaporated entirely; Something like it underlies our idea of normality. Studies in the humanities are intended to show students how people with different characteristics – accidents in the old terminology – struggle with human nature, and, as such, accrue the existential experiences of life.

Why is this important? It is generally believed that the citizens of a liberal democracy ought to understand the complexity of their society, and that the critical reading of philosophical essays, political constitutions, histories and literature, together with learning something of foreign language, allow students to experience the diversity of the world, albeit indirectly. The humanities teach that healthy individual human beings respond in different ways to given circumstances, most of which are “normal” in one social context or another, and in this way expose students to problems and possibilities not presented by their own lives. From the beginnings of the modern system of higher education, about a century and a half ago, all college students, no matter what their intended specialties, have been expected to undergo something of the broadening of the mind bestowed by the humanities. This broadening is taken to be the distinguishing mark of an educated person.

So far so good. But how are schools to evaluate students’ progress? The essay, for which Professor Hsu has written an epitaph, emerged long ago as something that it is seriously misleading to call the standard yardstick.

The fact that binary judgments about the issues raised by the humanities — yes and no, right and wrong — are only rarely appropriate, beyond a very preliminary stage, rules out simpler kinds of examination, and makes the field perplexing for students who expect to be taught how to do things. Learning in this area is discursive, indirect, and almost necessarily inefficient. Although some students find the work easier than others do, there is really no such thing as natural aptitude for the humanities. Coupled with this is the difficulty that almost everyone has in writing paragraphs that are interesting as well as coherent. To the demand for topical essays intended to reveal their understanding, most students respond with frustrated irritation. It is no surprise that they desire to shirk the obligation. Turning to AI for “help” is simply the latest way of shirking

I would suggest that schools embrace the new technology instead of capitulating to its less detectable productions. Students seeking honest assistance have usually been referred to notable essays for pointers, but notable examples of expository writing are quite unlikely to be helpful to any but gifted students. This is where the sheer blandness and predictability of essays composed by Large Language Models are an advantage. Working with professors or, better, graduate students serving as teaching assistants, students can get the hang of essay writing and of thinking in the humanities by improving what their computers spit out. (I have often found that it is much easier to edit a page than to write one.) Students will also learn to ask better questions of the AI, and, in turn, better questions of themselves — which is how all good writing begins. I should venture that some students might even come to enjoy starting from scratch.