I am startled by the message from blogger.com. It reads "**Try our new Beta Features**. Create a more engaging reading experience with the help of Google."
If that isn't bad enough, the line beneath reads, Google Search links: Based on your blog content, Blogger will automatically identify key words and phrases in your post and insert Search links in case your readers want to explore more. In Compose View, Look for the 'Pencil' icon on the top-right of the page to get started.
I do not want an intrusion into my writing, writing processes, nor my brain. Precious few things actually belong to humans and those few precious things are my thoughts, my experiences and the intertwining it requires to write them out. I write to think, to remember, to solve problems of life magnitude and of writing magnitude.
I want to affirm that everything I write, every post, comes from my brain.
Let's talk about the intrusion. The taking over of the American mind. One might have projected that it would have made us more peaceful, but thus far the consequences of AI, of social media, the invasion and manipulation of our thoughts has made it worse.
For fifteen years, I taught Socratic Seminar to high school students. This included literature, writing, twentieth century history and current events.
The rampant, unfiltered, unverified information challenged our discussions of current events.
I taught the history of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. But it didn't begin in 1948. I began with the story of Abraham who first came to the land of Canaan in approximately 2000 BC. I was thorough. Months after the October 7, 2023 debacle, I didn't talk about Israel and Palestine anymore.
The day it changed, was the day I mentioned "tunnels." A student raised her hand, "I heard there are no tunnels under Gaza."
Reason had left the classroom. It was replaced by propaganda. By confirmation bias. Students didn't know how to discern between truth and lies.
My information came from trusted news sources. Or so I believed.
When Trump ran for President in 2016, I encountered the same biases. I was neutral and remained so in the classroom, but one day a fierce hater, said something about Trump that I knew wasn't true. She insisted it was. I dismissed her from the discussion to find the evidence backing her opinion. I watched her closely as she hunched over a laptop, searching for the proof. Finally, she closed the computer with a huff. She avoided eye contact with me. She pouted until the bell rang. I said nothing. No need.
In looking back, I see my mistake. I should have challenged the "tunnel" young woman to find her resource and to look earnestly for evidence for the tunnels as well as evidence against their existence.
But I wasn't prepared. I was blindsided. I became frustrated and let go instead of holding on with logic.
As a strong believer in critical thinking, I was blindsided too by student use of AI resources. Writing was a mainstay of my students' critical thinking. When it was obvious they'd consulted AI, I would boldly not accept it. I would offer my help. I'd explain my thoughts and why their own thoughts were more important than a perfect response to the historic creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
But I was losing the battle for the necessity of critical thinking. We are programmed to look for shortcuts. We build Panama Canals to shorten maritime travel. We invent calculators to make math accessible. And I like nothing better than having access to immediate information. Ten times a day, I google a question that would take hours if I had to go to the library or search through my 1960s set of encyclopedias. I haven't consulted an old fashioned dictionary in months.
Hypocrite? Perhaps, but not in my writing.
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