University of Kwazulu-Natal

Comments First Drafts In The Ai Era By Marc Watkins

Bonisiwe Shabane
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comments first drafts in the ai era by marc watkins

How will people compose text moving forward, now that every author working with a digital word processor and internet access can use generative AI? Many will likely opt to write traditionally as they did before, but some will use AI in partnership to draft. At this point, the methods a writer uses to develop a first draft feel like a dealer’s choice dilemma—ask AI to generate the draft for you, or bring some of your writing to the... If students use AI in their drafting process, I’m increasingly drawn toward advocating for the latter method. I don’t like the idea of students going to AI and prompting a first draft. I know some have argued that this could be a helpful method to fight the blank-page anxiety most writers feel.

Others view this as helping maturing writers by giving them a template or outline to help them organize and scaffold their ideas. I think there may be some value in those approaches, especially in terms of helping struggling students who might otherwise balk at writing, but all of these approaches assume a maturing writer will then... Those of us who’ve taught first-year writing likely raised a questioning eyebrow at that idea. Students struggle quite a bit when writing. For many, that struggle is a productive one, helping them exercise habits of thinking and self-inquiry, testing ideas, taking creative risks, and often failing. Anne Lamott’s Shitty First Drafts lays bare this process with frank elegance.

I wish developers of LLMs would read it because as Lamott puts it, there’s a profound disconnect in how many fail to divorce the reality of the writing process from the end product: People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million... But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. That fantasy of the uninitiated doesn’t see the often maddening process that goes into shaping and forming the words and sentences on the page. Lamott does a wonderful job of articulating this struggle and demystifying it: Assistant Director of Academic Innovation at University of Mississippi

Is there a way for students to write first drafts in our AI era using this new technology, while also maintaining their creative and critical thinking? 👇 in comments Students first need to know the value of their own creative and critical thinking voices for themselves. Passionate about solving problems by asking the right questions across the policy and project life cycle. First drafts are where ideas are formed - where the narrative is developed- it is the most creative part before the polishing and refining begins. How will people compose text moving forward, now that every author working with a digital word processor and internet access can use generative AI?

For the student who can't get started on the blank page, what would you think about "Coach me through a brainstorming process that will help me write my essay" instead of "Write a first... I’ve been in situations where students come to office hours and want that coaching. I debate all the time if I’m actually helping or hindering the student in that context. The issue for many isn’t a lack of ability, but confidence. I would want to explore if an AI coach actually built a student’s confidence or if relying on a synthetic coach hindered their growth. Would an AI tell a student that they don’t need its help anymore and to trust themselves?

Good questions! Might some students come back to the same kind of coaching again and again, while others learn from the coaching and grow out of it over time? I'm guessing it would vary by student. FWIW, when I just tried this with ChatGPT, I got a friendly "You've got this!" at the end our interaction. https://chatgpt.com/share/89dff4a7-d8e8-4652-9142-12896eb92104 Anthropic’s Claude 3 is here, and with it comes much-hyped rhetoric of true artificial intelligence, which in turn leads to the predictable pattern of early adopters seeing ghosts of AGI in every output, followed...

We should pause and remember the people at Anthropic and OpenAI see current transformer-based systems as mere stepping stones on the road to true Artificial Intelligence, and playing into boosting or bashing creates more... OpenAI’s response to Elon Musk’s bizarre lawsuit reveals the true intention for these companies is to monetize AI assistants so that they fuel hype and criticism, which in turn create momentum and capital to... ChatGPT’s and Claude’s basic purpose is as a societal klaxon, a noise maker, a vehicle to drive interest to fund research into the most speculative science fiction fantasy in human history. Many of us (including me!) have added to this dynamic each time we’ve posted some example of an output we found astounding or took the time to note the critical lack of coherence, ethical... Claude 3 is not an example of AGI. It’s simply an improved version of a thing most people still haven’t found a use for in their daily life, and speculation is driving another version, begetting another then another, to fuel research.

It’s like living in a world where a new iPhone comes out each spring, but everyone still uses landlines. There’s this weird divide between certain developers building foundational models and, I guess you’d call ‘normies’ who don’t see a future where they log onto a device and merrily offload their labor, their skills,... The rationalist argument goes that if a machine can do it better, then what’s the point of a human's efforts? I think this is a much-misplaced idea that sweeps away humanity’s messiness for an often streamlined view of human nature. Recently, Scott Aaronson, one of OpenAI’s safety researchers, penned a sprawling post about generative AI’s impact on society and included the following bit about the future of pedagogy: Anthropic’s Claude 3 is here, and with it comes much-hyped rhetoric of true artificial intelligence, which in turn leads to the predictable pattern of early adopters seeing ghosts of AGI in every output, followed...

"the point is each human being should have the opportunity to think, to dream, to learn, to exist outside of the dichotomy between man vs. machine" I really liked this point. I think the first half of your posts into how powerful Technopoly as defined by Neil Postman truly is in the US. We are unable to really influence values as powerfully as the creators of this technology it seems. I really like the quote about dignity in writing and believe that part of the challenge in educating young writers is helping them to realize the strength, power, and importance of their own writing.

A reading seems to be that AI is anti-process - enter a prompt, get a paper or story - yet in composing, it is the process, which definitionally features considering ideas and racing down... And yet as a teacher of writing, I know that in the world outside my classroom/bubble, Final Product does matter - how do we include that disjuncture in our teaching and assessment?

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