Computers Cannot Read, Write or Grade Papers
Computers Cannot Read, Write or Grade Papers
by Robert David Jaffee
Shakespeare once famously said that the first thing we should do is kill all the lawyers. Perhaps, computer programmers and electrical engineers should be next on the list.
A recent article on The New York Times‘ website indicated that EdX, a nonprofit educational organization founded by Harvard and MIT, has come up with a computer program that will replace teachers in grading essays written by students. This ill-conceived idea, touted by two of the nation’s most prestigious centers of higher learning, would have us reduce writing, an art form, into a science.
What the computer programmers and electrical engineers don’t seem to realize is that not everything can be quantified, least of all art or writing.
Some years ago, I reviewed a book on creativity, The Nature of Creative Development. The author of the book,
