Composing with AI

GAI Implications for Students

Naomi S. Baron (2023) reports that they surveyed students as part of a book-in-progress about the effects of AI on human writing. Baron reminds readers that AI entails more than ChatGPT and Google Bard, which write long texts, as it entails simpler processes such as text completion and editing applications such as Grammarly. Students completing the survey noted that even in small ways, AI can take over writing and diminish authorial presence (Socrates shamed Polus for trying to speak at length on Gorgias’s behalf). Depending on editing applications and spell checkers can create dependence and foster diminishing writerly independence, students suggested. Ignore the diamonds.

Lyss Welding (2023) shares contrasting data from a now often cited BestColleges survey that reports even though 51% of college students consider using AI as cheating, some 43% have used GAI, 50% of whom used it to assist in completing college assignments. While 57% of students report no intention to use GAI, 61% of students anticipate that using AI tools will become routine. While Baron (2023) reports that students don’t want to lose their autonomy to AI, Welding (2023) reports that students think using AI will become normalized. We agree with those sentiments.

Ariana Tiscareno

AI writing has the potential to greatly benefit classroom practices, offering a range of assistance, such as provide instant feedback on grammar, style, and content, ultimately aiding in the development of students' writing skills. Moreover, AI-generated content can serve as a source of inspiration and guidance by helping students overcome creative blocks. However, there are concerns about over-reliance, which could stifle critical thinking and creativity (Baron, 2023). Striking a balance between AI assistance and traditional teaching methods is crucial to harnessing the full potential of AI in the classroom and enhancing learning and writing proficiency while preserving vital aspects of human expression and originality. Their effectiveness depends on how they are integrated into the learning environment.

Additionally, AI can assist teachers by automating grading and feedback, allowing educators to focus more on personalized instruction and critical thinking development. However, there are valid concerns that need to be addressed. Over-reliance on AI writing tools may inhibit the development of students' independent critical thinking and creativity. It's essential to strike a balance between AI assistance and traditional teaching methods to ensure students continue to cultivate their unique writing styles and problem-solving abilities. Furthermore, data privacy and security must be prioritized when using AI tools that involve sharing personal or academic content. Finally, the human element of education, including mentorship and personalized guidance, remains irreplaceable, and AI cannot fully replicate the nuance and emotional depth of human educators.

Tim Tran

As a writing tutor at my university, I give feedback on essays for university students of varying grade levels every day. I’ve never had cause to use AI tools to write for me, but I’ve heard growing discourse surrounding the use of ChatGPT in classrooms, at my work, and in my previous fields of filmmaking and copywriting. While I think it is highly possible for employers and business owners to use AI tools as a cost-cutting measure and for students to use them to cheat, I don’t think that banning or heavily penalizing its use is a practical solution. According to our research, the use of AI as a writing aid will become more ubiquitous – like any technological innovation created to facilitate human tasks – and AI prompting is proving to become its own literate skill set. In addition, current methods of detecting AI-written work are unreliable, and in some cases, may even result in false positives when attempting to reverse prompt an AI to determine if it produced an essay in question. A more pragmatic way forward would be to encourage more hands-on experience with learning-AI to become more acquainted with its advantages and limitations, if anything.

Evan Krikorian

As a student, artificial intelligence has always been a sort of buzzword in academia. Despite all the clamor and fear-mongering otherwise, I have never seen my peers discuss using generative AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard within my Master’s program, and most don’t even know what these large language models even do. In fact, I think the current faculty-led worry about students “maliciously” using models like ChatGPT is largely overblown, and I’m concerned that the overabundant conversation about “addressing” AI in the classroom has opened the floodgates more than it’s closed them. As such, I believe that there are two substantive options regarding AI in our post-pandemic classrooms: have students see artificial intelligence as another tool to consider in their writing processes or, ultimately, just leave the whole thing out to dry.

Katelyn Houston

While I cannot deny the seemingly immeasurable "benefits" of AI, namely, AI writing software, offers, I refuse to condone them just the same. AI's "convenience" does not negate its harm—not to the environment, not to our safety, and not to society as a whole. Writing is a means of expressing how we feel about something and why. The "convenience" we enjoy when employing AI writing software only interferes with the writing process, something that goes much deeper than merely writing and grammatically revising what we have written. Writing is a means of articulating our analysis of something; when we write about something we have analyzed, we attempt to come to our own conclusions about what something is trying to say, how it is saying it, and why.

When we write, we are given a better opportunity than when we speak to come as close as possible to what we truly believe and wish to say. We can refine our thoughts and organize them—think about what we have thought and reconsider if we truly feel that way anymore. We grow as people when we write—intellectually and emotionally. Employing AI during any stage of the writing process, even and especially at the beginning, when it is our responsibility as writers and critical thinkers to "read between the lines" of something and figure out how to prove our point, disrupts the critical thinking that writing serves and hinders our development as people. When AI tells us what to write about, it "critically thinks" for us. Why would—or should—we care to defend what a machine thinks? When we turn to AI writing software to "help" us with our writing, we are truly only selling ourselves short.

What we have to say and write matters. Whether we express these thoughts verbally or textually, we grant society a brand-new perspective on whatever we have interpreted that contributes to our understanding of the world. What does AI—again, something that is not human—have to say about the human experience? Furthermore, when we speak and write, our lived experiences shine through (whether we intend for them to or not), and we give them and ourselves a voice—a voice that we deserve. Why would we want to throw all that away because AI can produce "the same result" without all the work that should go into it? AI can't produce the same result. AI lacks the basic empathy inherent to living things; it has not lived and never will. What could AI possibly know about the human experience, let alone contribute to our understanding of it? Overall, it endangers the planet, it endangers our privacy, and, arguably most importantly, it endangers our minds. If we don't write, if we don't allow ourselves to think critically, what are we doing?