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Date of this Version
Spring 2025
Document Type
Article
Citation
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (2025) 26(1): 61–70
Abstract
Debates about “authenticity” are not new but cyclical, and insights from music history and performance studies can illuminate how we evaluate student work in an age of machine collaboration. At the turn of the twentieth century, Edison’s “tone tests” blurred the line between human and machine by staging performances in which audiences were challenged to distinguish live singers from phonographic recordings. These events inaugurated a century-long debate about authenticity in music, one that resonates strongly today as educators confront new challenges posed by large language models (LLMs). Drawing on Auslander’s (2023) account of liveness, authenticity in writing—like authenticity in music—can be understood as mediated, negotiated, and contingent. Just as recorded sound unsettled cultural norms around performance, generative AI unsettles assumptions about authorship, style, and voice in student writing. Rather than treating LLMs as a threat, then, honors educators might learn from music history and use this moment to explore alternatives to the standard admission essay—alternatives that help reveal students’ abilities and interests while remaining open to the productive contributions of artificial intelligence.
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