Teaching Writing Tip of the Week: Banning AI (Almost Completely) in the Writing Classroom: An Argument
Quote from Maciejewska, J [@authorJMac]. (2024, March 29). I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI. [Post]. X. Image available here.
Happy Week Two, Everybody!
Amy here for this week's tip, which focuses on the use of artificial intelligence in the writing classroom. I know everyone has already created and shared their AI policies with their students, and I invite you ALL to share your thoughts/policies/experiences with me (or Tanya or Al) so we can keep learning collaboratively and build on our collective wisdom as we steam ahead through these uncharted waters.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share my AI policy with you, which, to my surprise as I was composing it, led me to basically ban AI in my class (writing is a process of discovery—I wasn't expecting to ban it). I wrote it over the summer after a lot of thinking and reading about AI and the teaching of writing—especially in relation to multilingual students. Why did I decide to ban it? Because my job is to teach writing and language and to foster students' growth in both, a job AI threatens to impede. I provide my reasoning here as it appears on my syllabus. It is my hope that some of these points may help you as you wrestle with students' understanding of (and your own thinking about) the larger implications of using AI.
Before I share, please know: I try to negotiate EVERYTHING with students—to make them co-creators of the classroom and almost equal partners in the learning process (I want to say "equal" without hedging, but I can't). I negotiate deadlines, attendance policies, rubrics, assignment choices, how to handle late work, activities to do in class. My belief in the power of such negotiation has never wavered. But I'm not (yet) willing to waver on this policy. Here goes:
POLICY ON USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS (Such as ChatGPT)
In this course, we will also treat unethical use of artificial intelligence as a form of plagiarism. Let me explain.
For this class, ALMOST ALL of the writing you do should be written BY YOU without the help or use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. Here’s why:
I am selfish. I love writing, teaching writing, and reading others’ writing, because I love the diversity, uniqueness, and authenticity of the INDIVIDUAL, HUMAN VOICES I get to read in your writing. I love the accents, identities, uncertainties, and profundities of your words. I want to hear and read what YOU have to say, IN YOUR VOICE, not the text of a machine predicting content based on algorithms.
In order to develop YOUR voice (along with your language, writing, reading, speaking, listening, analytical, creative, and so many other abilities), YOUR mind—your brain—has to cognitively wrestle with the concepts and tasks we’ll explore in this class, step by step, day by day. Asking AI to “just do” a task for you without your continued involvement in that task is like asking someone to run a marathon for you.
I have a serious problem with AI morally: AI tools like ChatGPT were created from companies stealing copyrighted texts and images which writers and artists have struggled to produce and be paid for. The fact that big, wealthy tech companies just “scrape” that “data” off the web to create the large language models which AI feeds off of has resulted in numerous lawsuits (click here for an example)
Moreover, OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic. I am troubled.
AI information is NOT reliable information. See 32 times artificial intelligence got it catastrophically wrong.
AI perpetuates the spread of dangerous disinformation and misinformation. See, for example, Trump’s post of fake Taylor Swift endorsement is his latest embrace of AI-generated images.
And more concerns (the remaining points are taken directly from "Course Policies related to ChatGPT and other AI Tools" by Joel Gladd, Ph.D., licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License), made available through CTI:
AI platforms rely on language patterns to predict what an answer to a prompt should look like. They aren’t “thinking” about the right response in a way a student would.
AI platforms excel at predictive text and pattern recognition but struggle with accuracy. ChatGPT will even make up things (it “hallucinates” information) that sound convincing but aren’t true. Internet-connected platforms have not solved this problem. Bing Chat (which is based on GPT4) and Google Bard are connected to the internet and still hallucinate. If the user is looking for factual information, assume every output includes stuff that is made-up. [Worth repeating . . .]
AI platforms may express terrible biases. They have been trained on datasets that contain all sorts of worldviews and assumptions which it will replicate WITHOUT THINKING. Critical thinking strategies are thus especially important when engaging with AI-generated text.
Finally, I know there are benefits to AI. I know it’s here to stay. I know we need to learn how to use it ethically and productively. There MAY be specific times in this class when I invite you to explore AI in conjunction with your own writing, activities which will allow us to better understand the pros and cons of AI (see, for example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) — Top 3 Pros and Cons). But YOU first have to explore class exercises yourself—you will first brainstorm. You will first draft. You will first organize, edit, argue. Because your brain needs to do this work to continue developing.
Therefore, our policy is adapted from SSU’s Center for Teaching Innovation’s guidelines:
You should only use AI tools in this course when we do so as a group together for an assignment with my explicit permissions. Any work in this class that is AI-generated but submitted as “your own” without explanation and citation will be considered plagiarism. Those assignments will receive 0 points. Thus, the use of generative AI tools is not permitted in this course for the following activities:
· Impersonating you in classroom contexts, such as by using the tool to compose discussion board prompts assigned to you or content that you put into a Zoom chat.
· Writing a draft of a writing assignment.
· Writing entire sentences, paragraphs or papers to complete class assignments.
And on the very rare occasion when you are invited to use and then reflect on AI tools, they must be properly documented and cited in order to stay within university policies on academic honesty and integrity. When you are invited to use AI, text generated using ChatGPT or other AI tools should include a citation that aligns with specific assignment guidelines regarding expectations of citation. Some assignments may provide additional guidelines outlining AI usage that is encouraged or not permitted in the context of those course activities.
I may return to this topic later in the semester or year to discuss the ethical use of AI in teaching writing. But one stand won't change. Students have to do the work themselves.
Thank you—and have a wonderful semester, ALL!
Amy