Readers write

ALIDA C. SILVERMAN, ATLANTA

AI writing takes away an opportunity to learn

Before we get too excited about having generative AI do our writing for us, let’s remember what we gain in the writing process: learning. If you can’t write it down yourself in a way that makes sense, then you don’t yet understand what you’re talking about.

Oral arguments and internal thoughts often crumble when we try to commit them to the page. The written word reveals the holes and contradictions in our ideas. Difficult writing sends us back to the drawing board to reconsider and bolster our arguments.

If you want to develop your mental muscles and your understanding, then write things yourself. Likewise, if you want to develop your physical muscles, then lift weights. Don’t use a forklift to pick up the bar.

Using generative AI to do our writing might be quick and easy, but consider what’s lost. Writing is learning.

DANA R. HERMANSON, MARIETTA

Comments on ‘crisis’ show how backward things have become

A commenter in “DeKalb kids talk about ICE fears; teachers are silenced” (AJC, Dec. 15) and many ICE protesters nationwide rail about “kidnappings.” But if arrests of people in the country illegally are kidnappings, where are the ransom notes and the calls seeking money for the victims’ return? One would think that with thousands of kidnappings there would be at least one ransom note.

Regardless, the commenter, an organizer with the Atlanta Association of Raza Educators, considers that “this is a crisis.” Funny, it wasn’t a crisis when the U.S. border was being overrun with undocumented immigrants and our country’s sovereignty wasn’t being defended. Now that officials, educators and communities are faced with the logical consequences of prior ineffective governance and border control trying to be corrected, it’s a crisis. That’s how backward things have become.

GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA