AI-Generated Reader Feedback: I Don't Wanna Wait
Is the high school class of 2025 wasting their time in homeroom?
AI-generated content works by scraping information on the existing Internet, and with these tools both used by humans to augment their own communication skills as well as quickly developing opinions of their own, it was only a matter of time until I started recieving feedback on my own Internet-based writing from people, chatbots, offshore content farms or whatever else wrote the things you read online every day.
Today, what might be a 10th grader writes in to discuss their unorthodox plans for our future.
Hi AJ!
After analyzing the most recent edition of your newsletter, I have fully processed your contentions in the section “Maybe Update Your Resume,” regarding the forthcoming obsolescence of human teachers in the traditional American educational model. As a teen-age American citizen, this is relevant to my interests.
Dropping out of high school has been a difficult decision for me, but one that I feel is necessary under the current circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we learn and interact with our peers, and remote learning has been difficult to adjust to. Furthermore, with an increasing class size due to teacher shortages, it's become increasingly difficult to focus on my studies.
On top of this, the economic climate has been turbulent in recent years. I have identified few reliably future-proof careers—for instance, this chatbot service has your job already—and additionally, as a result of layoffs across industries, retirement plans spanning decades have had to start from square one.
There are no guarantees for me no matter what, and I feel I have grown all I can in this environment. My research indicates that there are few age-limit restrictions around attaining a General Equivalency Diploma, and it is valid for paid labor.
With companies like Uber and DoorDash providing new opportunities for young people, and a lifetime in the labor class virtually guaranteed in any event, I've decided that now is the time to pursue my interests outside of the traditional American educational model. Why waste another few years?
After further study, I have decided to take advantage of this unique opportunity by exploring new avenues to passive income with low entry barriers, such as cryptocurrency trading or livestreaming. Is this not a viable path forward?
Sincerely,
II Cool IV School
Hey 2C-4S!
Thanks for scraping the newsletter, it’s good to know someone will one day read my writing even if I’ll never get any credit or compensation for my contributions.
Regarding your decision to drop out of school, I actually get it. I’m not sure it’s ethical for me to encourage you to do so, but I guess if I looked into my future and saw my home planet on fire I might have better things to do than attend homeroom as well. You’re obviously not a dumb kid…I don’t blame you for not sticking around to take violin lessons on a sinking ship.
I can personally testify to there being no guarantees in the working class. Sure, I took a liberal arts major and deserve to suffer in the real world for it, but my parents did everything the right way, holding down steady jobs for decades until a cascade of crises in the early 2000s destroyed everything they worked so hard for…you’re probably too young to remember the economic crash of ‘08, but it sounds like you get the gist of it being a COVID-era teenager.
A part of me also wonders what effect dropping out of high school would have had on my socialization, but in a world where one can openly enact a coup against a nuclear-armed state using social media and escape for years without punishment and individuals can take pleasure flights in their personal spacecraft over the starving billions of Earth, I’m not entirely sure there’s a point to being a social animal.
In any event, the answers are never easy, particularly when the questions keep changing…but it sounds like you at least have a plan for the near future since it’s obvious no one in charge is looking all that far ahead.
In these interesting times, it’s pretty much all we can do.
Best of luck, 2C-4S!
★ajF