ChatGPT and Writing Assignments: A Response to Gorrieri

Our (2024) paper argues that undergraduate students have moral reasons to refrain from using LLMs to write some of their papers.Our argument is premised on the idea that every person ought to set the aim of safeguarding and promoting their autonomy and that the typical undergraduate student shows they have not set the end in question if they use ChatGPT to write their humanities papers.Laura Gorrieri argues that our view goes too far.She claims that the thoughtful use of LLMs as collaborative aids could promote students' autonomy (2025).She observes that writing encompasses a diverse array of tasks: "searching and reading relevant literature, preparing a draft, proofreading, among many others" (2).Several parts of the writing process have been automated by technology in morally unproblematic ways (spellcheckers, citation managers, etc.), and we have not done enough to specify which parts of the writing process are essential to fostering autonomy.Gorrieri suggests that students could treat ChatGPT like a co-author, outsourcing the activities that do nothing to promote autonomy.She notes that the two of us are co-authors and asks how this is different from having a chatbot co-author.Gorrieri explores some possibilities about how students could use LLMs to promote their educational aims and countenances the possibility of companies developing tools that are tailored for such purposes.We agree with many of Gorrieri's points.We agree that writing is not a monolithic process.We cannot deny that some parts of this process matter more to autonomy