006.3 - AI Writing Makes My Heart Hurt
it may be here to stay but I don't have to like it
A friend texted awhile ago asking for my thoughts on ChatGPT and AI writing in the education space and I’ve been reading and listening and thinking about it ever since. All sources are linked within this piece ~ please do click through to read more. I’ve been pondering much more than its place in eduction, in fact, because its place in society in general is what makes me the most sad from a moral and ethical standpoint. Listen to this Ezra Klein episode for a deep dive on AI’s “Jurassic Park moment”.
I started thinking about the erosion of creative value when AI first entered the audiobook space. This was huge in the audio world then, and was of obvious concern to voice actors whose livelihood was at risk. It also introduced massive rights issues when companies were/are cloning real human voices to use in AI narration. As the conversation on AI in audio continued, publishers started tiptoeing around it and voice actors banded together against it with the consensus being that the only value was financial. Which is artistically great but when it comes to capitalism, not going to stop it. Especially given Apple’s newest narrator. Now the publishing world is weighing in on ChatGPT and AI writing with skepticism about its place in the traditional publishing landscape ~ this makes me relieved. However, the audiobook world is niche and the traditional publishing landscape is heavily gated. What about the general writing and content landscape? That’s where I lament.
I have been having a conversation on Instagram about this topic, and the viewpoints there and the research I have been doing all point to it being a nuanced topic. But what about people without writing skills who need to write letters to contest medical bills? What about a business’ need to write quick content and not being able to afford a copywriter? Do we even NEED writing skills anymore? My initial response to these are that we need a better system than letters for contesting medical bills, the business who wants to grow like that needs to slow the hell down and do the damn work, and maybe we don’t need writing skills like we used to. Maybe we don’t need to require students to write massive essays and we definitely need to think of more rigorous assessments in school.
This morning I was playing around with the Magic Write feature in Canva after avoiding it since it was introduced because of my fundamental opposition to its existence. I first heard about it (beyond Canva’s email about the release) from a professional group I belong to, where another member was telling everyone how it amazing it is for writing cover letters. My mental response being “how do you explain to your new boss that you can’t actually write when you had such an impeccable cover letter?” Then I had to pick apart why paying someone to write a cover letter is any better and I decided that as far as maintaining the value of creative work, paying someone to write it wins hands-down. Then I wondered why money should determine who can get jobs and then I wondered why we have to write cover letters at all if the job doesn’t require writing and decided cover letters are outdated and ridiculous but also how the hell else are employers supposed to wade through thousands of applications? I digress. I finally decided to dive into Magic Write because I use Canva with my Marketing students daily, and I have to know thine enemy. Here’s a quick video of it in progress and below is an image of the results it gave me for the two prompts.
How did it do? Well, apart from the paragraph being way better than anything my students could write on their own, it would get a perfect score on my test question on the topic. The second prompt was something any listicle online would produce and people used to get paid to write it.
To those who claim that it’s all fine and I need to calm down because there’s a filter I can run my students’ work through I say: Have you ever had 150 student assignments to grade? Have you ever confronted a very entitled 17-year-old with your suspicions that their work was artificially generated and have it turn into a massive conflict where you end up in an admin’s office with parents? Also please note that I attempted to use the filter to test my paragraph and my request kept timing out. I signed up for the educator tool coming soon ~ we shall see. I’m not claiming that educators can’t fight this but when educators are leaving the profession and there is an entire industry right now offering coaching to help teachers fight burnout and there’s also a market for services helping teachers transition out of the classroom, teaching being harder than ever before really isn’t sustainable.
What am I doing to fight it? Well I have already been on that path for a bit now, but I can assure you that this semester in my Marketing classes I won’t have any essay questions in Canvas assessments ~ summative assessments with writing components will be handwritten unless technology is required per an IEP. More than that though, I have been making all my assessments project and application based. For example, in my Intro to Marketing course we do a semester long simulation with a coffee shop of students’ creation and all of their summative assessments will be designed around applying the concepts to their own coffee shop. I did that in past semesters as well, but I am now pondering on whether or not I include any general knowledge writing assignments at all. Perhaps if there is any value in AI writing it is the fact that it’s pushing me toward the more authentic assessments I should have been using all along? I appreciated this view of ChatGPT from the school librarian’s perspective as well.
When we move out of education and into the general world of content creation, I look at AI writing content as the Muzak of content. It exists as filler but not much else. Speaking of AI and music, you should really read what Ted Gioia has to say. The internet is and pretty much always has been unregulated as far as accuracy and quality of content, to the point of me being skeptical of 90% of what’s online. If it isn’t written by a major publication or by someone I know, it’s a crapshoot. As Harry McCracken writes in Fast Company, “I’m more concerned about people earnestly using it as a research tool, buying into its inaccuracies, and spreading them—at which point it will be awfully hard to strike them from the record.” ChatGPT is still working with 2021 data and earlier, although it is constantly updating try to improve accuracy, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t want my AI to be accurate. I just don’t want AI creating content.
I want people writing content and I want there to be less content if that’s what has to happen to ensure it is written by humans. I want fewer audiobooks, fewer books, fewer essays and less music and less written content. I don’t want art created by AI and I don’t want music created by AI. I want art and content created by artists and musicians and thinkers and writers. To all those who say AI content is here to stay and I need to accept it, I say I accept it the same way I accept hard seltzer and vapes in my school and QAnon and billionaires going into space. They exist and I abhor them.
Peace out, friends. I need to go find something to read that I’m positive was written by a human. All errors within this work are what will keep you certain that this was written by a human. Thanks for reading.
ETA: I’ve been chatting with a few people about ChatGPT for people with communication barriers and of course I want people who need it to have access to helpful technology. Fair doesn’t mean everybody getting the same thing, it means everyone getting what they need. But who says when it’s “fair”? I don’t know.
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