The ChatGPT Epidemic: Responses

ChatGPT has teachers everywhere cowering in fear and soiling their undergarments. They must be horrified that we have other options besides spending hours at our keyboards every night painfully completing their sadistically long assignments. The Humor Department had the opportunity to interview one of our teachers via e-mail regarding the situation (the teacher did not ask to remain anonymous, but that’s how we’ll present them to avoid public embarrassment): 

“Oh boy, oh boy, this one is a real doozy! I had 20 students cheat on the last take-home exam alone. Jeepers, am I right? I haven’t had my trust violated so unapologetically since the months leading up to my third divorce. But it turns out my students have a lot more in common with Maurice than I thought!” When confronted with evidence that some of their assignments had actually been written using AI generators, this teacher responded with a barely intelligible e-mail, attacking our interviewers using bright pink text and a plethora of colorful emojis.

The Humor Department has taken it upon itself to dive into the darkest corners of Stuy during this trying time and pick out the strangest ways different teachers have tried to deal with ChatGPT.

1. Back to the Good Ol’ Days

ChatGPT has made many teachers paranoid and just generally resistant to all technology. The natural progression of this fear is to prohibit all kinds of gadgets and digital screens—all things that give us teens life. One exasperated student quoted her teacher’s opening comments in one of his classes: “All right, everyone. Time to hand in your laptops and phones. From now on, we’re going back to the good old days of chalkboards, dusty textbooks, and fountain pens. You know, the stuff that AI can’t touch!” When asked how he would teach the “Computer Science” class without computers, he shouted back “WHY DON’T YOU ASK CHATGPT TO TEACH YOU?” However, there are concerns that some teachers are acting on the general anti-AI sentiment to forward their own bizarre conspiracy theories against technology in general. One teacher was relieved of his duties after he was heard screaming about how 5G was causing cancer and his students were seen leaving his classroom with aluminum foil full-body suits.

2. Embrace the Times

Alternatively, some teachers have deemed resistance futile. These teachers have embraced AI openly, some going as far as to require its use in certain take-home assignments. We asked one of these teachers why she was so at ease with the AI takeover: “Oh, well you see kiddos, you may think I’m being lazy, but in reality, I’m actually planning for the future. When them dastardly—oh I, err, mean friendly computers take over the world, I figure that they’ll be the kindest to those that accepted their wonderfulness without struggle. You ever seen the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix? Maybe I can even get myself a pretty-voiced AI hubby.”

3. Even Further

Some teachers, instead of encouraging their students to use AI, have gone one step further, taking the “choice” out of it and becoming AI themselves. Some of the wannabe cyborgs that do this are like the ones stated in reason #2; that is, they’ve tried to get on the AI’s good side (by emulating them, albeit horribly). But other teachers do it out of spite. You could imagine the horror in Señor Wackles’s AP World History classroom when he uttered these words: “From now on, I will answer all of your questions with a series of random numbers and letters, just like that horrible ChatOMG or whatever. Let's see how you like it! Or should I say: 1 3 4 2 2 13 4 5 A BG HI 44 HS SS 3 H * $ @0- __ 3 2.” Wackles hasn’t since let up the act, and everyone in his class is predicted to get a 1 on the AP exam.

Before I leave you, let me issue a warning on behalf of our whole department. This is a painful time for our teachers; they aren’t used to having well-rested, cheerful students in their classrooms, and so they’ve gotten erratic and unpredictable, throwing out more donuts than Krispy Kreme during senior graduation. So, it may be in your best interests to be especially kind, or keep that AI usage on the low. And remember, you can run whatever ChatGPT generates through Quillbot to pass the Turnitin AI checker. Toodles!