/Tech8h ago

Study Finds GPT-4 Reduces Diversity in College Admissions Essays

8280826535162.5K

#220

Original post

Gary Marcus#220

Valerio Capraro@ValerioCapraro

Students without access to LLMs are 2 to 8 times more creative than students with access.

That is the finding of a new paper comparing 2,200 college admissions essays written by humans before ChatGPT with essays generated by GPT-4.

The key point is not individual creativity. GPT-4 can write well, sometimes better than individual students. The problem is collective creativity.

Each new human essay added new semantic territory. New ideas. New angles. New experiences. New combinations.

Each new GPT-4 essay added much less.

The authors call this the diversity growth rate: how much novelty each additional text contributes to the collective pool of ideas.

Humans kept expanding the pool. GPT-4 made the pool converge.

Even when the authors pushed GPT-4 to be more creative, changed parameters, or used chain-of-thought prompting, the homogenizing effect remained.

This is the real danger of AI in education. Not that students will write worse. That everyone will write the same.

* Full paper in the first reply

6:19 AM · Jun 9, 2026 · 62.5K Views

/Tech8h ago

Study Finds GPT-4 Reduces Diversity in College Admissions Essays

8280826535162.5K

#220

Original post

Gary Marcus#220

Valerio Capraro@ValerioCapraro

Students without access to LLMs are 2 to 8 times more creative than students with access.

That is the finding of a new paper comparing 2,200 college admissions essays written by humans before ChatGPT with essays generated by GPT-4.

The key point is not individual creativity. GPT-4 can write well, sometimes better than individual students. The problem is collective creativity.

Each new human essay added new semantic territory. New ideas. New angles. New experiences. New combinations.

Each new GPT-4 essay added much less.

The authors call this the diversity growth rate: how much novelty each additional text contributes to the collective pool of ideas.

Humans kept expanding the pool. GPT-4 made the pool converge.

Even when the authors pushed GPT-4 to be more creative, changed parameters, or used chain-of-thought prompting, the homogenizing effect remained.

This is the real danger of AI in education. Not that students will write worse. That everyone will write the same.

* Full paper in the first reply

6:19 AM · Jun 9, 2026 · 62.5K Views

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Positive users praise GPT-4 and LLMs as superior writing tools that outperform humans, while negative users argue AI and digital methods reduce creativity versus traditional pen-and-paper approaches.

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Valerio Capraro@ValerioCapraro

Paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S294988212500091X

8h19042

REPLIES1

cc@TVAddictStill

@Erickschultz11 @ValerioCapraro How does it improve their writing without doing any thinking for them? (Or, rather, doing something for them that would require thinking if they did it themself (because AIs don't actually think at all).)

7h10

New Calculus@CalculusNe75865

"GPT-4 can write well, sometimes better than individual students."

All LLMs can ALWAYS write better than any human. There's simply no way a human can beat an LLM at writing. In this respect, LLMs are great equalizers especially for those who can't write well (myself included).

They are unbelievably fantastic tools. I am creative so they don't need to be. I am the guide and they my pen. To be frank, I absolutely loathe writing and such a big deal is made out of writing well. Sure, we should all write at an acceptable standard, but writing should not determine who succeeds or doesn't, especially non-native English speakers.

7h51

Erick@Erickschultz11

I really doubt your claim for one simple reason. People don't think the same.They don't come from the same background.They don't come from the same lived experience. AI doesn't write for them.They are the guide. It can improve the writing. It can help their thinking, but it doesn't think for them.

Unless they choose to let that happen.

7h33

🇸🇴 🕳️ Stochastic Dreams@GenHeres123

Frankly, I have serious doubts about the findings of this study. The LLM has been trained in every writing style known to humankind throughout history, from rigorous academic texts to street slang and philosophical musings. If we were to put this model in a writing competition with any human being in terms of 'diversity,' it would win by a landslide, not because I say so, but because the statistical range of the model far surpasses the capabilities of any individual mind, no matter how brilliant

7h451

musha「武者道」@mushaxbt

@ValerioCapraro this says more about college admissions essays than about LLMs. forcing personal storytelling into a template was the problem before AI.

7h66

Dunning–Kruger@tabulla_rassa

@ValerioCapraro Less creative students seek access to LLMs?

7h51

Invincible@InvincibleEdge

@ValerioCapraro prof reading your essay knowing its ai generated got easier overnight

8h42

cc@TVAddictStill

@CalculusNe75865 @ValerioCapraro If "All LLMs can ALWAYS write better than any human", why can't they write better poetry than the best poets or better fiction than the best novelists?

7h12

Erick@Erickschultz11

Well, I agree they aren't thinking like humans think. And that's why I think the individual using it should do the thinking. However they you know people may not.

a person who wants to be genuine would use it as a research assistant. As an editor and as a spell, checker and grammar checker.

Which is what many famous authors do already? They don't really do all of that work.They rely on software or people assisting them...

Another good analogy might be to think about a ghost writer. He doesn't fake a bunch of information about the person he's writing about. He and his assistants probably do a lot of interviews and get the data from him.

But what he writes is the product of their life, not a product of his imagination. And then it's polished up by the editors.

That's how I think of the artificial intelligence products.

6h5

Dax Britto@daxbritto

@ValerioCapraro Not surprising, Children who regularly do chores, spend time being bored and who write more using a pen on paper, outperform the digital friendly ones.

More digital does not solve for creativity, boredom does!