Becoming

27 quotes about AI & writing assignments

22 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

14 quotes worth reading about AI use in academic papers

13 Quotes worth reading about AI’s impact on College Administrators & Faculty

17 articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

June 12, 2023

14 quotes worth reading about AI use in academic papers

June 12, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Science, Elsevier and Nature were quick to react, updating their respective editorial and publishing policies, stating unconditionally that ChatGPT can’t be listed as an author on an academic paper. It is very hard to define exactly how GPT is used in a particular study as some publishers demand, the same way it is near impossible for authors to detail how they used Google as part of their research. Scholarly Kitchen

An app I have found useful every day is Perplexity. I am most taken with the auto-embedded citations of sources in the response, much like we do in research papers. This is most useful for deeper digging into topics. Inside Higher Ed

Tools such as Grammarly, Writeful, and even Microsoft grammar checker are relied upon heavily by authors. If an author is using GPT for language purposes, why would that need to be declared and other tools not? What if authors get their ideas for new research from ChatGPT or have GPT analyze their results but write it up in their own words; might that be ok because the author is technically doing the writing? I believe that self-respecting researchers won’t use GPT as a primary source the same way they don’t use Wikipedia in that manner. However, they can use it in a myriad of other ways including brainstorming, sentence construction, data crunching, and more. The onus of responsibility for the veracity of information still falls on the researcher but that doesn’t mean we should run to ban because some might use it as a way to cut corners. Scholarly Kitchen

An academic paper entitled Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring Academic Integrity in the Era of ChatGPT was published this month in an education journal, describing how artificial intelligence (AI) tools “raise a number of challenges and concerns, particularly in relation to academic honesty and plagiarism”. What readers – and indeed the peer reviewers who cleared it for publication – did not know was that the paper itself had been written by the controversial AI chatbot ChatGPT. The Guardian

An application that holds great potential to those of us in higher ed is ChatPDF! It is what you might imagine, a tool that allows you to load a PDF of up to 120 pages in length. You can then apply the now-familiar ChatGPT analysis approach to the document itself. Ask for a summary. Dig into specifics. This will be a useful tool for reviewing research and efficiently understanding complex rulings and other legal documents. Inside Higher Ed

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, (for APA) describe (in your academic paper) how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response. You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper. APA Style

Outside of the most empirical subjects, the determinants of academic status will be uniquely human — networking and sheer charisma — making it a great time to reread Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Chronicle of Higher Ed

The US journal Science, announced an updated editorial policy, banning the use of text from ChatGPT and clarifying that the program could not be listed as an author. Leading scientific journals require authors to sign a form declaring that they are accountable for their contribution to the work. Since ChatGPT cannot do this, it cannot be an author. The Guardian

A chatbot was deemed capable of generating quality academic research ideas. This raises fundamental questions around the meaning of creativity and ownership of creative ideas — questions to which nobody yet has solid answers. Our suspicion here is that ChatGPT is particularly strong at taking a set of external texts and connecting them (the essence of a research idea), or taking easily identifiable sections from one document and adjusting them (an example is the data summary — an easily identifiable “text chunk” in most research studies). A relative weakness of the platform became apparent when the task was more complex - when there are too many stages to the conceptual process. The Conversation

Already some researchers are using the technology. Among only the small sample of my work colleagues, I’ve learned that it is being used for such daily tasks as: translating code from one programming language to another, potentially saving hours spent searching web forums for a solution; generating plain-language summaries of published research, or identifying key arguments on a particular topic; and creating bullet points to pull into a presentation or lecture. Chronicle of Higher Ed

For most professors, writing — even bad first drafts or outlines — requires our labor (and sometimes strain) to develop an original thought. If the goal is to write a paper that introduces boundary-breaking new ideas, AI tools might reduce some of the intellectual effort needed to make that happen. Some will see that as a smart use of time, not evidence of intellectual laziness. Chronicle of Higher Ed

The quality of scientific research will erode if academic publishers can't find ways to detect fake AI-generated images in papers. In the best-case scenario, this form of academic fraud will be limited to just paper mill schemes that don't receive much attention anyway. In the worst-case scenario, it will impact even the most reputable journals and scientists with good intentions will waste time and money chasing false ideas they believe to be true. The Register

Many journals’ new policies require that authors disclose use of text-generating tools and ban listing a large language model such as ChatGPT as a co-author, to underscore the human author’s responsibility for ensuring the text’s accuracy. That is the case for Nature and all Springer Nature journals, the JAMA Network, and groups that advise on best practices in publishing, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics and the World Association of Medical Editors. Science

Just as publishers begin to get a grip on manual image manipulation, another threat is emerging. Some researchers may be tempted to use generative AI models to create brand-new fake data rather than altering existing photos and scans. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that sham scientists may be doing this already. A spokesperson for Uncle Sam's defense research agency confirmed it has spotted fake medical images in published science papers that appear to be generated using AI. The Register

Also:

21 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

13 quotes worth reading about Generative AI policies & bans

27 quotes about AI & writing assignments

22 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

13 Quotes worth reading about AI’s impact on College Administrators & Faculty

17 articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

June 06, 2023

27 quotes about AI & writing assignments

June 06, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Last night, I received an essay draft from a student. I passed it along to OpenAI’s bots. “Can you fix this essay up and make it better?” Turns out, it could. It kept the student’s words intact but employed them more gracefully; it removed the clutter so the ideas were able to shine through. It was like magic. The Atlantic

Its ability to do so well in that niche might be a reminder to us that we’ve allowed academic writing to become a little bit too tightly bound up in a predictable pattern. Maybe forcing us to stretch the kind of assignments we’re giving students is not a bad thing. Inside Higher Ed

The teaching of writing has too often involved teaching students to follow an algorithm. Your essay will have five paragraphs; start the first one in with a sentence about your main idea, then fill in three paragraphs with supporting ideas, then wrap it up with a conclusion. Call it a format or a template or an algorithm. Schools have taught students to assemble essays to satisfy algorithms for judging their writing—algorithms that may be used by either humans or software, with little real difference. If this kind of writing can be done by a machine that doesn’t have a single thought in its head, what does that tell us about what we’ve been asking of students. The unfortunate side effect is that teachers end up grading students not on the quality of their end product, but on how well they followed the teacher-required algorithm. Forbes

AI writing tools bring urgency to a pedagogical question: If a machine can produce prose that accomplishes the learning outcomes of a college writing assignment, what does that say about the assignment? Inside Higher Ed

ChatGPT is a dynamic demonstration that if you approach an essay by thinking “I’ll just write something about Huckelberry Finn,” you get mediocre junk. Better thinking about what you want the essay to be about, what you want it to say, and how you want to say it gets you a better result, even if you’re having an app do the grunt work of stringing words together. Forbes

AI is trained on large data sets; if the data set of writing on which the writing tool is trained reflects societal prejudices, then the essays it produces will likely reproduce those views. Similarly, if the training sets underrepresent the views of marginalized populations, then the essays they produce may omit those views as well. Inside Higher Ed

Artificial intelligence is likely to have some impact on how students write, according to John Gallagher, a professor in the English department at the University of Illinois. When word processors replaced typewriters, written sentences got longer and more complicated, he said. Wall Street Journal

In-class exams — the ChatGPT-induced alternative to writing assignments — are worthless when it comes to learning how to write, because no professor expects to see polished prose in such time-limited contexts. Washington Post

Students will only gravitate to chat bots if the message they are getting from their writing instructors is that the most important qualities of writing are technical proficiency and correctness. Inside Higher Ed

Hold individual conferences on student writing or ask students to submit audio/video reflections on their writing. As we talk with students about their writing, or listen to them talk about it, we get a better sense of their thinking. By encouraging student engagement and building relationships, these activities could discourage reliance on automated tools. Critical AI

It’s not easy to write like a human, especially now, when AI or the worn-in grooves of scholarly habits are right there at hand. Resist the temptation to produce robotic prose, though, and you’ll find that you’re reaching new human readers, in the way that only human writers can. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Here’s an idea for extracting something positive from the inevitable prominence that chatbots will achieve in coming years. My students and I can spend some class time critically appraising a chatbot-generated essay, revealing its shortcomings and deconstructing its strengths. Washington Post

David Chrisinger, who directs the writing program at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago is asking his students to generate a 600-word essay using ChatGPT. Then their assignment is to think of more incisive questions to elicit a stronger response. Finally, they are required to edit the essay for tone and voice and to tailor it to the intended audience. Wall Street Journal

Instead of just presenting conclusions, give the reader a glimpse of your origin story as a researcher, a sense of the stumbling blocks you encountered along the way, and a description of the elation or illumination you felt when you experienced your eureka moment. If you tell stories, tell them well. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Students may be more likely to complete an assignment without automated assistance if they’ve gotten started through in-class writing. (Note: In-class writing, whether digital or handwritten, may have downsides for students with anxiety and disabilities). Critical AI

In a world where students are taught to write like robots, a robot can write for them. Students who care more about their GPA than muddling through ideas and learning how to think will run to The Bot to produce the cleanest written English. The goal is to work through thoughts and further research and revision to land on something potentially messy but deeply thought out. Inside Higher Ed

What many of us notice about art or prose generated by A.I. It’s often bland and vague. It’s missing a humanistic core. It’s missing an individual person’s passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person’s imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity. New York Times

The most obvious response, and one that I suspect many professors will pursue, involves replacing the standard five-page paper assignment with an in-class exam. Others expect to continue with the papers but have suggested that the assigned topics should be revised to focus on lesser-known works or ideas about which a chatbot might not “know” too much. Washington Post

Assigning personal writing may still help motivate students to write and, in that way, deter misuse of AI. Chronicle of Higher Ed

We’re expecting students to use ChatGPT to write a first draft of their paper but then not use it to revise the paper. I don’t consider myself a pessimist about human nature, but in what world do we humans take a perfectly good tool that helped us get from point A to point B and then decline its offer to take us from point B to point C? Inside Higher Ed

Writing teacher John Warner wrote, “If AI can replace what students do, why have students keep doing that?” He recommended changing “the way we grade so that the fluent but dull prose that ChatGPT can churn out does not actually pass muster.” Chronicle of Higher Ed

Assign writing that is as interesting and meaningful to students as possible. Connecting prompts to real-world situations and allowing for student choice and creativity within the bounds of the assignment can help. Chronicle of Higher Ed

No one creates writing assignments because the artifact of one more student essay will be useful in the world; we assign them because the process itself is valuable. Through writing, students can learn how to clarify their thoughts and find a voice. If they understand the benefits of struggling to put words together, they are more likely not to resort to a text generator. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Really soon, we’re not going to be able to tell where the human ends and where the robot begins, at least in terms of writing. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Many teachers have reacted to ChatGPT by imagining how to give writing assignments now—maybe they should be written out by hand, or given only in class—but that seems to me shortsighted. The question isn’t “How will we get around this?” but rather “Is this still worth doing?” The Atlantic

As the co-editors of a book series on teaching in higher education, we receive many queries and proposals from academic writers. A significant percentage of those proposals — which often include sample chapters — are written in prose that reads like it was generated by ChatGPT. The author’s ideas are laid out like bullet points on a whiteboard, the citations are dense and numerous, and the examples and stories (if there are any) are pale and lifeless. The most successful books in our series are the ones that don’t read like that. Their authors have demolished — or at least weakened — the wall that separates their subject matter from their lives. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Also:

21 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

13 quotes worth reading about Generative AI policies & bans

22 examples of teaching with AI

13 thoughts on the problems of teaching with AI

June 01, 2023

22 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

June 01, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Students should know that this technology is rapidly evolving: future detectors may be able to retroactively identify auto-generated prose from the past. No one should present auto-generated writing as their own on the expectation that this deception is undiscoverable. Inside Higher Ed

Alex Lawrence, professor at Weber State University, described it as “the greatest cheating tool ever invented.” Wall Street Journal

Some plagiarism detection and learning management systems have adapted surveillance techniques, but that leaves systems designed to ensure original work “locked in an arms race” with systems designed to cheat. Inside Higher Ed

Popular essay submission portal Turnitin is developing its own detector, and Hive claims that its service is more accurate than others on the market, including OpenAI’s very own, and some independent testers have agreed. Tech Radar

While faculty members will likely spend some time trying to identify a boundary line between AI assistance and AI cheating with respect to student writing, that may not be the best use of their time. That path leads to trying to micromanage students’ use of these models. Inside Higher Ed

You can have tools like Quillbot (that can) paraphrase the essays ChatGPT gives you so it doesn't look too obvious. Mashable

“If I’m a very intelligent AI and I want to bypass your detection, I could insert typos into my writing on purpose.” said Diyi Yang, assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University. Inside Higher Ed

But what about the cheaters, the students who let a chatbot do their writing for them? I say, who cares? In my normal class of about 28 students, I encounter one every few semesters whom I suspect of plagiarism. Let’s now say that the temptation to use chatbots for nefarious ends increases the number of cheaters to an (unrealistic) 20 percent. It makes no sense to me that I should deprive 22 students who can richly benefit from having to write papers only to prevent the other six from cheating (some of whom might have cheated even without the help of a chatbot). Washington Post

If a teacher’s concern is that students will “cheat” with ChatGPT, the answer is to give assignments that are personal and focused on thinking. We don’t have to teach students to follow a writing algorithm any more; there’s an app for that. Forbes

What’s to stop a student from getting ChatGPT to write their work, then tweak it slightly until it no longer gets flagged by a classifier? This does take some effort, but a student may still find this preferable to writing an entire assignment themselves. Tech Radar

If the concern is that students could cheat, it’s worth remembering that they could cheat six months ago and 60 years ago. Students taking a brand-new exam could already get answers to test questions in minutes from services like Chegg. Students could already plagiarize — or pay someone else to write their entire paper. With the entrance of ChatGPT, “what’s changed is the ease and the scope. Chronicle of Higher Ed

If ChatGPT makes it easy to cheat on an assignment, teachers should throw out the assignment rather than ban the chatbot. MIT Tech Review

Professors can create conditions in which cheating is difficult, giving closed-book, closed-note, closed-internet exams in a controlled environment. They can create assignments in which cheating is difficult, by asking students to draw on what was said in class and to reflect on their own learning. They can make cheating less relevant, by letting students collaborate and use any resource at their disposal. Or they can diminish the forces that make cheating appealing: They can reduce pressure by having more-frequent, lower-stakes assessments. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Unlike accusations of plagiarism, AI cheating has no source document to reference as proof. “This leaves the door open for teacher bias to creep in.” Washington Post

Despite their positive attitude towards AI, many students (in a survey say they) feel anxious and lack clear guidance on how to use AI in the learning environments they are in. It is simply difficult to know where the boundary for cheating lies. Neuroscience News

While the AI-detection feature could be helpful in the immediate term, it could also lead to a surge in academic-misconduct cases, Eaton said. Colleges will have to figure out what to do with those reports at a moment when professors have yet to find consensus on how ChatGPT should be dealt with in their classrooms. Chronicle of Higher Ed

“Do you want to go to war with your students over AI tools?” said Ian Linkletter, who serves as emerging technology and open-education librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. “Or do you want to give them clear guidance on what is and isn’t okay, and teach them how to use the tools in an ethical manner?” Washington Post

Even if detection software gets better at detecting AI generated text, it still causes mental and emotional strain when a student is wrongly accused. “False positives carry real harm,” he said. “At the scale of a course, or at the scale of the university, even a one or 2% rate of false positives will negatively impact dozens or hundreds of innocent students.” Washington Post

On many campuses, high-course-load contingent faculty and graduate students bear much of the responsibility for the kinds of large-enrollment, introductory-level, general-education courses where cheating is rampant. How can large or even mid-sized colleges withstand the flood of nonsense quasi-plagiarism when academic-integrity first responders are so overburdened and undercompensated? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Bruce Schneier, a public interest technologist and lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said any attempts to crackdown on the use of AI chatbots in classrooms is misguided, and history proves that educators must adapt to technology. Washington Post

Harsh punishments for cheating might preserve the status quo, but colleges generally give cheaters a slap on the wrist, and that won’t change. Unmonitored academic work will become optional, or a farce. The only thing that will really matter will be exams. And unless the exams are in-person, they’ll be a farce, too. Chronicle of Higher Ed

“I think we should just get used to the fact that we won’t be able to reliably tell if a document is either written by AI — or partially written by AI, or edited by AI — or by humans,” computer science professor Soheil Feizi said. “We should adapt our education system to not police the use of the AI models, but basically embrace it to help students to use it and learn from it.” Washington Post

Also:

21 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection

13 quotes worth reading about Generative AI policies & bans

27 quotes about AI & writing assignments

22 examples of teaching with AI

13 thoughts on the problems of teaching with AI

April 19, 2023

6 Ethical Questions to Think about if you use Generative AI

April 19, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

1. The image below recently won one of the world’s most prestigious photography competitions.

The artist said it was “co-produced by the means of AI (artificial intelligence) image generators.” He wrote, “Just as photography replaced painting in the reproduction of reality, AI will replace photography. Don’t be afraid of the future. It will just be more obvious that our mind always created the world that makes it suffer.”

Do you agree? What role should AI have in the creation of images, not only in contests but by those producing media for companies, schools, and even churches?

2. If a painting, song, novel or movie that you love was generated by an AI, would you want to know? Would it change your reaction if you knew the creator was a machine?

3. Would it be ethical for a chatbot to write a PhD thesis, as long as the student looks over and makes refinements to the work? What percent of rewriting would be the minimum to make this acceptable?

4. Is it OK for AI to brainstorm ideas for projects or products that you later claim as your own? Would it change your answer if you came up with the original question? What if you fine-tuned some of the ideas? What if you give the AI some credit for helping you?

5. If you use AI and it plagiarizes an artist or writer, who should be blamed? Would your answer change if you were not aware the AI had committed the plagiarism? How might you prove that you were unaware?

6. How do you draw the ethical line for using a chatbot like ChatGPT? Would it be OK for writing an email to schedule a meeting? A sales pitch to a client? A religious sermon? A conversation in an online dating app? A letter to a friend going through depression?

There are more ethical questions for AI in this Wall Street Journal Article

March 16, 2023

The Coming Textpocalypse

March 16, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

From a piece of genre fiction to your doctor’s report, you may not always be able to presume human authorship behind whatever it is you are reading. Writing, but more specifically digital text—as a category of human expression—will become estranged from us.

Am I worried that ChatGPT could have (written this article) better? No. But I am worried it may not matter. Swept up as training data for the next generation of generative AI, my words here won’t be able to help themselves: They, too, will be fossil fuel for the coming textpocalypse.

Matthew Kirschenbaum writing in The Atlantic

March 13, 2023

7 Free Webinars about AI, journalism, writing, & more

March 13, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Monday, March 13 - AI & the Future of Journalism

What: We will examine the AI field and its impact on journalism, for good and for ill. What features of AI hold the most peril for journalists? Which hold the most promise? How does an AI program actually work? Does AI threaten journalism jobs? Can journalists investigate AI tools? If so, how? Are there practical hacks for determining whether content is AI-generated or real?

Who: Garance Burke, global investigative reporter, The Associated Press; Daniel Verten, head of creative at Synthesia; Emilia Diaz Struck, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists; Justin Gluska, founder of Gold Penguin and AI technology blogger.

When: 6:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free but registration is required

Sponsor: The Deadline Club

Tue, March 14 - Elevating Your Nonprofit's Online Presence: Best Website Practices for 2023

What: The trends and strategies that will help your organization stand out in the digital landscape. Whether you're a new or a well-established nonprofit, this webinar has everything you need to take your website to the next level. From mobile-first design to accessibility compliance, we'll cover all the essential elements that go into creating a seamless and satisfying online experience for your users.

Who: Erin Mastrantonio of Elevation which designing websites for nonprofits.

When: 11 am, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Nonprofit Learning Lab

Fri, March 17 - Firewalls & Journalism: What to know about Internet shutdown trends

What: Join us for a virtual panel discussion that will delve deep into the worrying spread of Internet kill switches and what it specifically means for a free press.

Who: Ksenia Ermoshina, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and Center for Internet and Society; Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel for digital rights watchdog group Access Now; Nat Kretchun, senior vice president for programs at the Open Technology Fund; Moderator: Rachel Oswald, National Press Club press freedom team lead and a foreign policy reporter for CQ Roll Call

When: 11:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: National Press Club & The Journalism Institute

Sat, March 18 - Ask an Editor: The Craft & Business of Writing

What: We will answer questions and offer insights into the craft of writing and the struggles we all face in these uncertain times.

When: 10 am, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Allegory Editing

Tues, March 21 - The state of digital publishing: metrics, insights and revenue strategies

What: A look at the current state of digital publishing and what will it look like in 2023 and beyond with information from Pugpig’s State of the Digital Publishing Market report. Including: Comparison of reader engagement across users and platforms, case studies of innovation in digital publishing, the use of audio and how it drives engagement, and how news publishers intend to retain readers in 2023.

Who: Jonny Kaldor, founder and CEO, Pugpig, a digital publishing platform for hundreds of news, consumer, specialist and B2B media brands.

When: Noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: America’s Newspapers to take a deeper look into the report.

Tues, March 21 - AI-Generated Art: Boom or Bust for Human Creativity?

What: A discussion on how generative AI works, how artists are using these tools, and whether AI-generated art will be a boom or bust for human creativity.

Who: Ahmed Elgammal, Professor, Rutgers University; Patrick Grady, Policy Analyst, Center for Data Innovation; Marian Mazzone, Associate Professor, College of Charleston; Irene Solaiman, Director of Policy, Hugging Face; Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy, Creative Commons

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Center for Data Innovation

Wed, March 22 - ChatGPT, Journalism, and the Future of Creativity

What: What happens when leading journalists who cover science and eminent scientists who reach mass audiences get together to exchange ideas? What do their differing perspectives tell us about how science communication is changing and how we can do it better?

Who: Joanna Stern writes and makes videos at the Wall Street Journal, where she is the senior personal technology columnist. She won an Emmy in 2021. Jean Oh is an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University who builds robots with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.

When: 6:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Journalism Institute at New York University

Thu, March 23 - Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism

What: A discussion of the inspiring stories of pioneering women journalists. You’ll hear about the challenges they faced and how they paved the way for the next generation.

Who: Brooke Kroeger, Kim Todd, and Knopf editor Jonathan Segal about their book “Undaunted”

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: American Journalism Online