The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

by Nicholas Carr

As I was finishing this book late in 2009, I stumbled on a small story tucked away in the press. Edexcel, the largest educational testing firm in England, had announced it was introducing “artificial intelligence-based, automated marking of exam essays.” The computerized grading system would “read and assess” the essays that British students write as part of a widely used test of language proficiency. A spokesman for Edexcel, which is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Pearson, explained that the system “produced the accuracy of human markers while eliminating human elements such as tiredness and subjectivity,” according to a report in the Times Education Supplement. A testing expert told the paper that the computerized evaluation of essays would be a mainstay of education in the future: “The uncertainty is ‘when’ not ‘if.’”1 How, I wondered, would the Edexcel software discern those rare students who break from the conventions of writing not because they’re incompetent but because they have a special spark of brilliance? I knew the answer: it wouldn’t. Computers, as Joseph Weizenbaum pointed out, follow rules; they don’t make judgments. In place of subjectivity, they give us formula. The story revealed just how prescient Weizenbaum had been when, decades ago, he warned that as we grow more accustomed to and dependent on our computers we will be tempted to entrust to them “tasks that demand wisdom.” And once we do that, there will be no turning back. The software will b...