Dear Reader,
When I was seven, my favorite movie was the 1989 sci-fi/comedy Back to the Future 2 In the movie, Doc and Marty travel from 1985 to 2015 and are flabbergasted to witness a society filled with flying cars, video chat, and even selflacing Air Jordans.
While critics believed the Back to the Future series to be an iconic piece of sci-fi, it had left out an important detail. It had failed to predict the true scale of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the 21st century.
AI is nothing new to modern society. Every day we encounter examples of AI ranging from Tesla’s self-driving cars to marketing chatbots to facial recognition to Grammarly to Google Maps. In the last few months, the materialization of ChatGPT and OpenPlayground AI—online chat bots that can generate everything from love letters to poetry to even a Buzz Scroll article—has only helped push the once-esoteric subject into the public eye. Recently, my US-China Relations class generated terms for a quiz using ChatGPT and my Research in Sustainability teacher used it to create class discussion questions.
Due to its prevalent use, discussions around the benefits and drawbacks of AI are swirling again in academia and beyond. Does ChatGPT complement or hinder learning? Will these advances in AI create a digital authoritarianism in places like China? Will the prominence of AI signal the downfall of print media and journalism? Will our society become like those in the dystopian novels we read by 2050?
During these times, a 1998 Scroll article describing internet use at the Academy offers some insight. Instead of fearing the new invention, Scott MacArthur ’98 welcomed it, writing, “The internet is a valuable and resourceful tool that every student was supposed to have…” Perhaps our paranoia about ChatGPT is all for nothing. One hundred years from now, future generations may even laugh at our fears just like how we currently remember the Luddites, a group of radical workers who destroyed textile machines in the 19th century.
In the first Scroll issue of 2023, we hope to explore the role of AI in our lives. In the Opinion and Editorials section, Eric Li ’24 and Billy Tang ’25 argue that ChatGPT may be beneficial for humanity in the long run but perhaps detrimental to student learning. But suppose you’re unsure what ChatGPT even is. In that case, Sophia Gao ’26 and Tessa Bracken ’24 explain the new technology in the News section, comprehensively investigating how Deerfield teachers and students have responded to the rise of it. To see ChatGPT in practice, you could flip to the Buzz section, where we’re publishing our first-ever article written by AI. “Deerfield Academy: A Guide to Surviving the Wilderness” is a humor piece generated by OpenAI Playground under the prompt, “write a funny article about life at Deerfield Academy for the Deerfield Scroll newspaper.”
A few weeks ago, I jokingly told our Scroll faculty advisors that perhaps, in five years, all stories in the Buzz section may be wholly written by AI. Yet, a January 17 The Washington Post article recently reported that “it turns out the bots are no better at journalism—and perhaps a bit worse—than their would-be human masters.” Though AI has ingrained itself into every facet of our lives, human journalism and Scroll writers are here to stay for now.
Warmly,
Sunshine 陈心旎