Writing in a Post AI World
It took about a week for humans to break ChatGPT, with teasing the AI into doing silly, sometimes unsettling things becoming the new viral, online activity.
But the technology is undeniably good at writing to a formula, thoroughly and grammatically, which should press humans to find way to exceed the AI and play to their strengths and humanness in writing colourful, creative work.
"What ChatGPT might just do is bring about greater opportunities for students to engage with the big question of what writing is really for, and how human writers, and their software counterparts, affect equity, social justice, and the planet,” says Dr Lucinda McKnight from Deakin University.
“Students need to be writing in original, creative, personal, ethical and meaningful ways, not acting like robots writing to algorithmic rules like ChatGPT.”
The technology’s arrival also means that the way we test English needs to be recast, "ChatGPT exposes what a waste of time it is to teach students to write in formulaic, NAPLAN-style ways. Families need to be asking schools how students are being taught to skilfully incorporate, critique, and exceed AI writing. NAPLAN does not test this," says McKnight.
“When machines can write to formulas, humans need to develop different skills. The national project I am leading at Deakin University, funded by the Australian Research Council, focuses on teaching digital writing. The pilot study for the project showed how frustrated English teachers already are, with the limitations of teaching writing in the NAPLAN era.
"ChatGPT is a gamechanger because it makes AI writers, which have been around for years, more friendly and appealing for users; industry is already using them for “low level”, formulaic writing of sports and business reports and blog posts for example. Leading academics have already called for the withdrawal of the NAPLAN writing test because of its limiting effects,” says McKnight.
Dr Sean Williams Discipline Lead of Creative Writing at Flinders University and an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author and composer is an advocate for creative engagement with AI and has been experimenting with these new tools himself, expecting his students to do the same.
"In my classrooms this year, students will be encouraged to explore the capacities and limitations of ChatGPT in creative writing experiments. They will also be asked to critically appraise the results, ensuring that they engage with this technology in meaningful and purposeful ways.
"AI is similar, in principle, to spell-checking and word processing in they are they are skill prostheses. These tools are prostheses but for skills instead of limbs: technology fills the gaps in people’s experiential and material capacity. The benefit to people who lack skills or resources, such as those for whom English is a second language, is obvious.
"Each form of technology needs to be learned, and all tools have potential downsides. Students often have to be taught that spell-checkers themselves need checking. As a teacher, it’s my job to provide those lessons, but ignoring such tools does not equip my students with the skills to engage with a world where AI writers are, or will be, widely used.
"ChatGPT is a tool for evolution which mirrors some of the functions of our own brains. Externalising those functions helps us to better understand them, creates new possibilities that we might not have occurred to us, and empowers creators who do not yet have those skills or may never acquire them. Without such tools, these disadvantaged creators might otherwise be completely excluded from the conversation between creator and audience. Diversity enriches the arts, so I see this as a clear cultural benefit.
"Overall, I’m excited about ChatGPT. I have long been an advocate for creative engagement with AI and have been experimenting with these new tools myself. I expect my students to do the same - just as I expect them to use other forms of software in the process of their writing."
Image by Jessica Lewis Creative