Why I'll be Keeping AI Out of My Intro Level Creative Writing Classes

Last year, I had the pleasure of teaching creative writing at the undergraduate level for the first time. It was a great experience, mostly—

Until AI stepped in.

I had thought that I would probably be able to spot AI-generated prose when it appeared in my classes, and I think that for the most part, in many cases, I did indeed notice it happening.

But I wasn’t prepared for the defensiveness, or the difficulty talking to students about it, or gaining confessions from those who used it.

I wondered: what’s compelling them to use AI?

And I think the answer to that question is incredibly varied—some might use it because of time pressure, to get a grade, because they don’t care, or because they think that gen-AI-created art is the direction the world is heading in and they’re fatalistic, or they might just not see what the problem is in using it if it creates the right “product” (which, spoiler alert, it doesn’t—a fake might pass a few inspections but be discovered eventually, and when it is, it will be stripped of its falsely perceived value).

My answer, though, to why I’m choosing to keep AI out of my entry-level creative writing classes is simple:

I don’t see any threat or danger to keeping it out of my classes, but I do see a threat to keeping it in. And that is:

Students might think they need it.

It’s the same reason we don’t hand kindergarteners calculators to teach them math. Their own minds are capable of it, and learning to perform the simple operations that are the foundations of mathematical calculations is actually an essential skill to being able to perform more complex operations.

Do many mathematicians ultimately end up using calculators? Absolutely. But they don’t rely on them, and being able to use a calculator to solve problems isn’t what made them mathematicians in the first place—it was a passion and skill for thinking about numbers, how they relate together and what thinking about them can do.

The same ideas seems to translate well to creative writing. Will writing professionals eventually (many of them already are) begin to utilize AI tools in the process of creating of their own writing? Sure, probably. And should we teach students to do so as well, to help make them AI literate and competitive?

Why not? I’m happy to keep exploring the possibilities of different ways to use LLMs and gen-AI in creative writing so long as these resources remain easily accessible and interesting. But that can all wait until the 300-level. I’ll let them gain a little competence first.