I saw a TikTok video explaining how professors are using AI tools to scan students’ writing to detect AI generated sentences and phrases. The standard for American universities today is that no more than 20% of the content of an essay should be AI generated. To me, that felt like a high threshold. Nonetheless I was intrigued. 

InsideOut publishes around 25 unique anthologies annually. I wondered what the AI detection software would find if we submitted a student’s poem, so I submitted 10 poems. Each time I hit submit I got the same result: AI itself determined that these poems were without a doubt “100% Human” written. 

It was a fun experiment, but also a powerful anecdote about the impact of InsideOut’s programs on students’ writing and self-expression. If the act of writing is transformative, you don’t have a reason to take a shortcut. 

I started to think…what would ChatGPT write if, like our students, it was honestly expressing itself? I went back and forth with a chat bot for a long time, attempting to get to the core of what an honest ChatGPT poem is. It presented me with plenty of images and metaphors, but eventually, it told me “I cannot write an ‘honest’ poem about human emotion because I do not possess the biological or subjective hardware required to experience it.”

There are plenty of quotes from authors, academics, and politicians that warn about new technology. But what my little experiments proved to myself was that our work will continue to be relevant. It was relevant when we used dial-up internet, it was relevant when social media spread, it was relevant when kids started getting smart phones, it’s relevant during this era of AI uncertainty, and it will be relevant in another 30 years. 

That’s because we teach critical thinking and social emotional awareness, and these are the skills that allow you to communicate far more specifically and deeply than a computer. These are the skills that allow you to be better at work, at home, and with your friends. AI can help architects draft faster, it can help engineers code more efficiently, and it can make your thermostat talk to your dishwasher if that type of thing is important to you. But it can’t tell you how it feels, it can’t tell you how you feel, and it can’t make that feeling beautiful and resonant.

InsideOut is perennially important because 1. Creative expression is a deeply human impulse and we provide that platform for young people, and 2. Our team is adaptive, we listen to youth and help them to make sense of the current moment. 

Throw a few dollars our way if you want Detroit students to know, in their heart of hearts, that their voice matters because they are human.

John Randolph

Development Manager