How are you addressing AI in your syllabus?
My rule: "Use an AI text generator only if the assignment explicitly calls for it or allows it, and follow specific assignment guidelines to disclose which text comes from the AI."
Want to add yours here?
https://bit.ly/AITextEdu
I’m concerned about the assumption that if an AI can do something it’s not worth learning to do unaided. It can write a pseudo personal statement but students need to learn to write an authentic one.
That's a point worth thinking about. I'm sure we already agree that _any_ learning is already worth doing, for its own sake. And that being able to introspect, and put such introspection into words for a personal statement is a cultural skill that touches on many dimensions. And that an AI synthesized personal statement is an oxymoron.
Let's think about two different skills however: the skill to write a personal statement unaided, and the skill to take a synthesized draft, spot and understand its flaws, and make it so much better. Do these skills overlap? Completely? Causally?
@boris_steipe Thanks for articulating that. I can see that AI might serve as scaffolding and actually help students ultimately improve independent writing skills. I'm not opposed to that as long as it really is better than the other available pedagogical options. I just don't want to see students become dependent on AI for all substantive writing, so that implies there need to be assignments where they don't use it.
@boris_steipe And that means we either "trust" them or we find or encourage technologists to make a way to distinguish machine-generated text. "Trusting" them would mean leaving them to their own devices to distinguish their own words from the AI-generated ones when they're working in a hybrid way. My students need help to learn to avoid plagiarism, and similarity reports are a tool for that. I've been advocating for an AI text transparency tool such as the watermarking OpenAI is researching.
@boris_steipe @amills And the initial genesis thought seems like the most important one. Whatever comes to #mind, we try to make it true, with the actions and words we choose after that. An important social skill is to be #consistent in our beliefs/values/personality with ourselves & our peers. To let a mindless machine initiate that self-storytelling is giving up the most powerful moment of #FreeWill we have. Don't let students cede that #agency to an AI #agent.