If you've been on social media lately, you've doubtless encountered fictional stories and essays generated by "ChatGPT," an artificial intelligence program that can generate remarkably solid pieces of prose in response to prompts both serious and whimsical, and can do so instantly and in any imaginable style. Others, mostly writers and teachers, are filled with existential dread. "My life--and the lives of thousands of other teachers and professors, tutors and administrators--is about to drastically change," wrote English teacher Daniel Herman in The Atlantic. My hunch is that's a lot less true than he thinks. For starters, let's immediately dispense with the idea that artificial intelligence will make writing instruction obsolete.

Teenagers have always found ways around doing the hard work of actual learning. CliffsNotes date back to the 1950s, "No Fear Shakespeare" puts the playwright into modern English, YouTube offers literary analysis and historical explication from numerous amateurs and professionals, and so on. For as long as those shortcuts have existed, however, one big part of education has remained inescapable: writing. Barring outright plagiarism, students have always arrived at that moment when they're on their own with a blank page, staring down a blinking cursor, the essay waiting to be written. Now that might be about to change.