Until the age of nine, my academic performance was a source of pride for my parents—until a traumatic experience involving mistreatment by teachers in a public school severely damaged my self-confidence and triggered performance anxiety that would persist throughout my life.
Thanks to the tireless work of a private tutor, I managed not to fail that year and returned to the private school I should never have left, where I completed my technical education in Data Processing.
That experience left a deep mark: I became dependent on cheat sheets—not so much for the content, but for the psychological security they gave me. I developed sophisticated techniques to hide those notes and even began coding them, though I rarely had to use them. All that effort was more about easing anxiety than lack of knowledge.
Then came generative Artificial Intelligences…
Even before I had direct contact with some of them—especially text generators—I was already hearing disparaging comments that only piqued my curiosity. Was the tool really the problem? Or was the issue in how people used it?
Have you ever seen a spray can lid being blamed for a vandalized wall?
Some time ago, I attended a lecture on a paradigm shift in education due to new AI technologies. By then, I had already formed my own opinion about using these tools, and I must admit, I took some pleasure in observing how conflicting the various opinions were.
At one point, a university professor protested that ChatGPT was a tool for cheating on exams and schoolwork—and that this was a serious issue.
Someone else responded by saying that, on the contrary, more and more teachers are integrating ChatGPT into their classrooms as a reference tool—so that students can not only learn content but also develop critical thinking about what the tool presents to them.
I loved that term: CRITICAL THINKING!
That’s when I remembered a study I had done when I returned to university to study Art History. It was about the visual representation of the human figure and how this representation influences how we perceive certain technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
You see, intelligence is an intrinsically human trait, and for that reason, anything that is more or less intelligent ends up conveying a certain sense of humanity to us.
That’s how it works with our pets—when they behave “like people,” they become “part of the family.” And it’s the same with virtual agents we interact with.
And if we have a tendency to anthropomorphize new smart technologies, then we also find a certain comfort in transferring our responsibility for certain actions onto the machine.
And it is precisely at this point that critical thinking comes in—that term that enchanted me so much.
“Is the information I received from this ‘intelligence’ actually correct?” or “Should I really do this just because it says I can?” and above all:
“Is what I’m doing truly the right thing?”
Today, while opening the G1 news website, the following headline jumped out at me:
“‘Cheating’ on the 2024 ENEM: Candidates Post About Smuggling Essay Templates into the Exam Room,” a rather interesting article by Luiza Tenente.
The article reports that some ENEM 2024 candidates confessed on social media to having brought printed, pre-written essay templates into the exam room—hidden and intended to be used as cheat sheets. They boasted about how they hadn’t been caught by proctors.
These students obtained the materials by either purchasing or accessing ready-made essay templates available online—some free, others sold for up to R$50. These templates were generic, including introductions, cultural references, and arguments that could be adapted to a range of topics. Their strategy was simply to fill in the blanks with the exam’s specific theme.
One person even shared this “golden tip” on social media…
I won’t be surprised when manifestos against artificial intelligence start popping up—but what about critical thinking?
How much is your future worth?
How much is it worth to wake up early on a Sunday and spend at least three hours in a classroom, hunched over, eyes fixed on a sheet of paper? Fifty reais?
The tools are on our side—but what we do with them is a moral and ethical decision that lies entirely with us.
It’s very likely that the same AI some of those students used to create a generic essay and cheat the rules is the same AI I’ve used to summarize one or another part of my long-winded text you’re reading right now—and the same AI I constantly use for scientific research, extracting meaningful information from massive volumes of historical text.
So, if there really is such a thing as a golden tip, there are two—and here they are:
Take responsibility for your actions, even when aided by a machine.
“DEVELOP YOUR CRITICAL THINKING!”
