With the emergence of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, professional writers worldwide have been wondering how this technology will affect their field. While AI is certainly controversial, prompting strikes from the likes of the Writer’s Guild of America to protect writers’ jobs and petitions signed by thousands advocating to “Pause Giant AI Experiments,” one thing is certain: new technology is notoriously difficult to stop in its tracks.
With a pragmatic view of AI’s continuous march, Margaret Poncin, Professional Lecturer in the WRD department, looks to see how writers can adapt to new AI technologies and remain relevant and competitive in their field.
Join us for an exclusive interview with Professor Poncin, where she discusses her new class coming Winter Quarter 2024: Writing with AI.
What are your goals for the course and what can students hope to learn?
The course this winter will have two goals: First, I believe DePaul students should have the skills to use AI tools to be competitive in the workplace. At the same time, however, this also means understanding where they add value as humans, with their very human writing styles and experiences and critical thinking abilities. There’s some excellent early data demonstrating AI’s positive effect on productivity in workplace writing tasks, but also how risky overreliance can be.
I hope students will leave the class with some prompt engineering skills, some experience using different generative AI tools, and—most importantly—a better understanding of how large language models work so that they know when to use them and when not.
The second goal is to help students understand the impact that writing with AI has on us as individuals and as a society. In fact, we’re in the process of getting the course approved to help students fulfill the Social, Cultural, Behavioral Inquiry (SCBI) domain requirement, which should be finished by the time the course starts. There have been a lot of ethical concerns raised about this issue—and rightly so! For example, how will these tools affect the economy and the workplace? Are they reproducing bias and discrimination? How do they affect our understanding of authorship and intellectual property? What about our learning and critical thinking? What about our relationships with each other?
What sparked your interest in teaching this subject?
I got interested in this topic because there has been so much hype around generative AI tools since ChatGPT was released last November, and I kept seeing TikToks and Op-Eds and Twitter posts saying, “Hey, AI can write my paper assignment!” Half of the time, these were students giddy with excitement, and the other half were professors lamenting that everything they love about teaching had just died. For a long time, I was feeling this yo-yo of thrill and fear. And so I started reading everything I could about large language models, and neural networks, and the latest versions of ChatGPT.
The more I learned, the more the mystification started to clear. I realized that we’re actually in a middle ground: Yes, this is a writing tool that can produce prose that is very human-like. But the more I learned about and actually used these tools, the more I could recognize their output and see their limitations. That’s why I want to teach this course—because I want to share this understanding with students.
How is the course structured?
The course will be primarily hands-on and discussion-based, with mini-lectures dispersed throughout the session. Specifically, we’ll try out different AI tools, discuss readings about how recent AI developments are shaping individuals and society, and I’ll provide background and guidance through mini-lectures as needed.
What major projects will be assigned to students?
Throughout the term, students will complete several “Writing Challenges,” composed with the assistance of artificial intelligence. I’ll probably adapt these a bit once I learn students’ majors, but right now I have a variety of genres planned, including some creative writing, some business and public-facing genres, and at least one multimedia composition. As a final project, they will also do a short research paper analyzing the relationships between contemporary society, individuals, and AI. Finally, students will complete some short reflections and readings responses to help prepare for and reflect on their other writing projects.
What are the readings that students will need to complete?
We’ll start the class by doing some reading on how large language models and generative AI works. After that, students will encounter a mix of emerging studies, opinion pieces, blog posts, and podcasts that address the social and cultural impact of writing with these tools.
Which AI platforms will students be using for writing, and what specific skills related to writing with AI will be developed throughout the course?
My goal is to stick with platforms that we can access for free. Right now, the best tool is ChatGPT 4, which we can access through Bing, but we’ll also try out Bard and Claude, as well as some multimodal applications like DALL-E or the ones from HuggingFace. If we get access by next term, I’d also be excited to play with Google’s Gemini!
Is there any other information or advice you think would be beneficial for students to know before enrolling in this course?
No prior experience with AI or coding is necessary to enroll in this course. In fact, I doubt we’ll use much coding at all. Instead, the course is designed to be interdisciplinary, so in addition to counting as an elective for WRD majors and minors, it is also crosslisted with English and Communication, and would be useful for anyone wondering about how AI might impact writing in their field.
Conclusion
AI is unlikely to be paused per petitions or halted in the name of humanity. As technology progresses, our responsibility as writers becomes to understand it, not just by mastering its mechanics, but by understanding its implications and potential impact. Writers, as the meaning-makers, storytellers, and information suppliers of the world, must remain vigilant and informed. By putting away our torches and pitchforks and working to understand AI while staying rooted in ethical considerations and authentic expression, we can ensure that the narratives of tomorrow are not just technologically advanced, but human at heart.
Enroll in Professor Poncin’s WRD 242: Writing with AI to learn how to navigate and harness AI to its fullest potential, while still retaining your unique sense of humanity.