Freelance Traveller

#76: To AI or Not AI

My day job now includes advising students on the use, or not, of generative AIFor example, I’m the author of the Library’s pages on AI Literacy (and happy to take comments/criticism!). But I also have to answer enquiries and cover the topic in lectures.. Thus, I’ve been having to think about the boundaries of what counts as acceptable use.  Some look at the ethical issues around LLMsSee, for example, The Verge, “AI Is a Lot of Work” (e.g. disregard for intellectual property, energy demands and climate change, the abuse of workers training the data sets in developing countries) and decide that no use at all should be made of LLMs.  Others might look at the harm it may be doing to our thinking processes and avoid using it on those groundsThe Guardian, “Don’t ask what AI can do for us…”. I have a lot of sympathy for both views.

Unfortunately, as I raise these issues with my boss, her manager and senior university leadership, I’m mostly just told “the genie is out of the bottle” and we have to come to terms with using such tools.  The students certainly are.  A part of me wonders whether in, say, three years-time all this will be as natural as using a calculator for mathematics or a spellchecker for writing.  Or whether by then LLMs will have ingested so much AI created text that they’re now producing a sort of ‘grey goo’ of bland text or images that no one cares for.  Or whether there will be an even greater step up in their abilities such that we can’t not use them because we’re so hopelessly outclassed.  May you live in interesting times!

Here are some thoughts I’ve had on the ‘boundary’ with regards to text which is not exhaustive and still very much a work in progress in terms of thinking and use:

• Spell checking – not a problem – though I still like having my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary to hand for really getting to grips with a word and the physicality of looking them up which helps learn them.
• Grammar checking – not a problem – although of limited use for me as I’ll often overrule any ‘suggestions’ because I know they’re wrong or I don’t like the style.
• Predictive text – I don’t think this is a problem, but it’s utterly useless for me as I type way to fast to be helped by it.  Although I did recently pause for thought at the keyboard and notice that it wasn’t suggesting one word but three and it was the next words I was about to type.  That gave me further pause for thought as I considered that isn’t that what generative AI does, just on a larger scale?!
• Study planning (I suppose in my context this might be “writing planning” or time management) – I’m happy to tell students that this is a good usage of generative AI.
• Ideas generation – I think this is ok and would probably advise students that.  However, as a ‘Belbin plant’ this is not something I struggle with.  My problem is corralling all the ideas I already have and limiting them to the ‘sane’ or what I actually have time for.
• Outlining – not so sure on this.  I’ve seen some examples of generative AI doing a pretty good job of this, but isn’t this what a student is supposed to be learning to do?  I’d at least advise having a go yourself first and then seeing if generative AI adds anything.  Such usage probably needs referencingI’ve contributed to the Library’s advice on how to go about referencing such use. But it gets ever more complicated as more and more of the databases we subscribe to are adding “AI” elements where students can get a journal article or book chapter (at least) summarized and often more..
• Paraphrasing – definitely into the ‘iffy’ area and my advice to students is that they might use it cautiously and in a limited way, but they absolutely must reference such usage.
• Copying and pasting – definitely not!

Generative AI art, I know, has raised a lot of heated argument, but I’d be interested in others’ views on the ideas/text side of Traveller writingI’m aware I’m particularly thinking here of writing for publication (free or paid for) and there might be a lot more freedom in a gaming group, for example or writing for your own amusement in a solo journalling experience, say..