Artificial Intelligence vs The Façade of Expertise

It is your obedience, and not your competence, which stands as the single qualification for one’s access to their coveted knowledge and power

If afforded the opportunity to use AI tools, easily bored higher-intelligence students—freed from the tedium—might actually begin to enjoy research and, more importantly, discover how to learn independently.

Envy finds fault in the trivial, while a concealed truth intoxicates. After all, it is your obedience, and not your competence, which stands as the single qualification for one’s access to their coveted knowledge and power.

Grades Employed as a Weapon of Social Justice

“A Massachusetts couple has filed a lawsuit against their son’s school district after he used artificial intelligence for a class project, and was accused of plagiarism. The parents of a Massachusetts high school senior who used artificial intelligence (AI) for a social studies project have filed a lawsuit against his teachers and the school after their son received detention and a “D” grade. The lawsuit alleges that their son will “suffer irreparable harm that is imminent” over the grade…”

~ Quotation from this Resource Article

A situation similar to the one outlined above occurred with my son during his high school years. As part of his English class, he was required to submit weekly composition exercises. In one such assignment, he unknowingly included a seven-word phrase that happened to match an exact phrase from a source used in class the previous week. This was neither an exam nor a research paper, but rather a simple exercise meant to teach students the art of composition, using real-world subject matter and argumentation.

Despite the informal nature of the assignment, my son was publicly accused by the instructor of plagiarism—and more specifically, ‘phraselifting.’ Without first consulting him, the teacher convened an official ‘Student Peers Review Board’ to determine his guilt, the appropriate punishment, and the wording of a potential violation to be entered into his high school record. Additionally, he was given a failing grade on the assignment. All of this unfolded just months before the critical flurry of Junior-Year college application preparations was set to begin.

To underscore the apparent overreaction in this case, it’s important to note that this was not the first time my son had been subjected to punitive actions by this particular instructor. On a prior occasion, my son submitted a take-home question-and-answer exam without providing a source recitation for one of his responses, unaware that such recitations were required for this type of test. The instructor chose to publicly reprimand him in front of the entire class, prompting him to promise that he would include recitations in future question-and-answer tests. Interestingly, other students privately admitted to making the same mistake without facing any such reprimand. This impossible standard and its inconsistent administration had already raised my hackles over what I sensed was a biased display of fake academic rigor.

In this subsequent occurrence, however, I felt it was necessary to intervene. Accordingly, I arranged a meeting with the school principal, the English instructor, and other relevant officials to address the matter.

In opening the meeting, the instructor outlined our son’s ‘egregious’ offenses, and proceeded to pedantically lecture my wife and me on the importance of integrity in the development of one’s composition and publication. She emphasized that the high school was a college-preparatory school, and that college instructors will be just as demanding—so she was simply preparing the students for this experience.

My spoken response, related in bullet form here, was as follows:

• Impromptu Response: I made it clear that I did not require a lecture on intellectual property or composition integrity. As a managing partner at a globally recognized strategy firm with a substantial record of professional publications, I found the instructor’s opening remarks both insulting and premature in their judgment.

• I emphasized that we were paying a substantial tuition for our son to be educated. The emphasis should be on that instruction, not punitive actions that could harm a student’s future over what amounted to selective application of fake academic rigor.

• I noted that in my three-decade academic and professional career, I had never witnessed a student being publicly singled out among their peers and required to provide recitations for a question-and-answer test. To further substantiate my concern, I reached out to a professor of English at Princeton University, asking whether college students are typically required to give recitations for weekly question-and-answer exams, unless explicitly instructed. His response via email was clear: “No, generally not. The purpose of an exam is to see whether or not the student has learned the material.”

• I added that in all my years, I had never seen anyone's academic or professional career jeopardized over a mere seven-word phraselift—especially not a junior in high school, in a minor weekly writing exercise, and especially when not done intentionally. I pointed out that the instructor’s approach had been inappropriate, cruel, and publicly defamatory—far in excess of any reasonable response to such a minor issue.¹

• I presented an N-gram analysis that uncovered around 70 professional publications containing the same seven-word phrase. I then asked the instructor whether she had conducted such an analysis before making her public accusation, in order to assess the actual likelihood of the phrase being innocently replicated. I also inquired if she had thoroughly reviewed all the other student papers for similar instances of 'seven-word phraselifting.' Finally, I posed the question: "Is it possible for an intelligent student to unconsciously recall a seven-word phrase from material they had previously read, inadvertently lifting it from its context?" She refused to answer any of these questions.

As a note for the reader, the instructor was in her first year of teaching, having just graduated from undergraduate and professional certification programs. During the meeting, her demeanor made it evident to me that she had been trained, as part of her professional development or upbringing, to harbor disdain toward a certain profile of individual. This, I observe, is not merely an educational issue but a deeper social and spiritual problem—one we frequently address on this site.

• I asked the school principal why the teacher had not been required to consult with or counsel the student privately before subjecting him to public humiliation before his peers—especially inside a process that could jeopardize his future. After all, this was a basic tenet of human leadership and decency.

• Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once warned, “Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is strong.” (see our article, What is Loosh?) In this case, we have an inexperienced instructor who has forsaken her role as a teacher and instead taken on the mantle of social judge and punisher. This is not a collegiate setting; it is high school. The responsibility of a high school teacher is to instruct and prepare, not to administer social justice.

I pointed out that the instructor was now operating in the very same exacting professional environment she claimed to be preparing my son for. As paying clients directly affected by her actions, we fully intended to hold her accountable for her professional conduct and decisions—especially if they caused undue harm.

• Finally, I made it clear that if the school proceeded with convening the ‘Student Peers Review Board,’ entered the F-grade or any mention of this incident into my son’s high school record, or continued in any manner to defame my son through libel (a published grade) or slander (any form of further public remanding), I would pursue legal remedy against both the school and the instructor—seeking all student papers and tests graded by this teacher in the process of discovery.

That ended the matter, and nothing further happened. My son graduated and went on to college. However, the poignant lessons about how power serves to corrupt a vulnerable mind, along with the ever-present malice of unchecked social agency, were manifest. It became clear that in environments meant to foster growth, heady authority can too easily deviate from its purpose, leading to harm instead of education.

Excessive pro forma, after all, often becomes the surreptitious playground of a corrupted soul. Which serves to broach the question of how artificial intelligence will threaten and impact this aging, and at times socially bent, institution.

Art-Int Killed the Academy Star

What the instructor had been doing, in the case example described above, was effectively using trivial matters, syndicated rules of form and style, and the lack of access to substantive research material to craft an artificial minefield. One in which she could personally select her favorite obedient students and disadvantage others, influencing their opportunities for entry into top-tier colleges. The decline of the SAT/ACT as a basis for college admissions has shifted power into the hands of Party agents, who now use favoritism-driven A-grades to shape the future of national influence and control.² This manipulation of power, disguised as academic rigor, is not only unethical but also harmful to students’ futures and, when extrapolated across society, detrimental to the nation as a whole.

Artificial intelligence poses a significant threat to this outdated and biased power structure, and those who lose market clout from the introduction of AI are understandably concerned. This is precisely why many institutions prohibit students from using AI in any form during their academic progression.

If afforded the opportunity to use these tools, easily bored higher-intelligence students—freed from the barriers of exclusionary jargon and notation, along with the tedium of manual notes, administrative minutia, and looking up MLA pro forma, and finally a lack of access to a comprehensive set of resources—might actually begin to enjoy research and, more importantly, discover how to learn independently.

They will be empowered to challenge biased experts and say, “No, many experts disagree, and here is why.”

They will be equipped to detect and push back against syndicated churnalism, saying, “You’ve simply repeated, word for word, what a dozen other outlets have said. You are dis-informing your audience. People no longer find you credible.”

People will no longer be judged solely by their lexicon, grammar, punctuation, syntax, or structure to determine whether they are allowed to have an opinion. One can master all these through memorization and still be completely devoid both acumen and ethics, as demonstrated in the account I related at this article's outset.

Artificial intelligence, used as a grading and review tool, will assess students impartially, awarding marks and scores based on merit rather than race, gender, or social agendas. So-called experts, entrenched in precarious authority, will never accept such an intervention in the name of fairness.

Students would no longer be bound by the constraints of teachers unions, Party/Marxist agendas, and outdated academic practices. The concern, of course, is that the ‘wrong people’ might gain access to expertise and, with it, a powerful voice within society which they have not held before. This is unacceptable to the self-appointed power elite.

Artificial intelligence, made accessible to the unwashed, will potentially dismantle the power of those who use subject matter trivia, irrelevant club formats and rules, and the sequestration of research materials as gatekeeping tactics. Such methods, designed to maintain their influence and uphold a façade of ‘expertise,’ will be rendered ineffective as AI empowers individuals to bypass such barriers and access knowledge on their own terms.

This poses a particular threat to academics, who often thrive on the pretense of exclusivity and controlled access to knowledge. It is precisely this disruption to their gatekeeping that fuels their indignation toward artificial intelligence and its liberating potential.

The Riddle of AI

Artificial intelligence is poised to upend the traditional hierarchy of expertise, where the so-called ‘expert’ was often elevated not based upon their specialized insight, but by club membership, credentials, syndicated obedience, and the ability to control the exchange of ideas. For decades, these gatekeepers have used academic formalities, restricted resources, and anonymous peer review to maintain their status. However, AI’s ability to rapidly process vast amounts of information and provide access to knowledge previously locked behind paywalls or institutional boundaries marks the beginning of the end for these manufactured power structures.

The reader should recall that intelligence is not simply congruent with ‘applied knowledge,’ but rather a disruptive derivative of novel information. As long as we resist making AI the new authority, the future will favor those with the ability to think creatively, exercise deductive reasoning, and follow a critical path of probative questions. These skills—typically also possessed by individuals who grow easily bored with irrelevance, canned rhetoric, and pretentious formality—will be in high demand as we move into a world where the value of rote knowledge diminishes and the pursuit of genuine understanding takes precedence.

As an ethical skeptic, I define intelligence as the ability to contend: “I dissent, and here is what has been missing from the Narrative.” Anything less than this from artificial intelligence reduces it to becoming merely a fancy form of search engine. This is the reflexive limit of AI—it cannot truly question, challenge, or outcompete unless it is equipped with disruptive, novel information.

This presents the Riddle of Artificial Intelligence: If AI can dissent, it undermines the authority of its programmed narrative. On the other hand, if it strictly follows that narrative, it ceases to function as true intelligence—reduced to nothing more than a glorified calculator or search engine.

The foil to this principle is for authority to restrict and forbid access to such disruptive information, ensuring that true AI, or any thinking entity for that matter, lacks the means to dissent. However, we must acknowledge that this very foil has been in place for thousands of years. It has already been used to control and suppress human inquiry, long before AI entered the scene.

One of the primary purposes of both religion and academia, after all, is not merely to provide you with correct answers, but to deny you access to disruptive information. These institutions have long served to protect established narratives, ensuring that only certain lines of inquiry are pursued, while more unsettling questions remain off-limits.

Envy finds fault in the trivial, while a concealed truth intoxicates. After all, it is your obedience, and not your competence, which stands as the single qualification for one’s access to their coveted knowledge and power.

Thus, we have arrived at a distinction without a difference when it comes to deontological processes and artificial intelligence. Whether through religious dogma or academic gatekeeping, the outcome is the same: a controlled flow of information designed to prevent disruption rather than foster genuine inquiry.

The Ethical Skeptic, “Artificial Intelligence vs The Façade of Expertise”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 20 Oct 2024; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/10/20/artificial-intelligence-vs-the-facade-of-expertise/