Prior to beginning this research I had heard of AI writing news articles in specific test cases but I had no idea how advanced it has become. Just days ago I was grading environmental issue papers submitted by students. I was curious how well some websites which claimed to be able to write essays would do so I typed in “elephant poaching” and in two minutes an essay was returned. It was not perfect, but what grade 10 student can write perfectly? This paper was legitimately well-sourced and brought up interesting points. I was floored. I then stumbled on Google’s work with adapting this into mobile devices and how users could have conversations with user-created characters on the fly and based on locations and objects around the user. I couldn’t help but think of all the ways a future app may combine these and other elements and really change the way we teach. This future isn’t even very far off from now!
Thanks, and enjoy:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/BdwTwJXgg94Oh/
Hi Jonathan,
Appreciate this — I’ll be getting AI to write all of my future assignments…
All jokes aside, we are already seeing this with autofill and suggestions on our phone keyboards. Even LinkedIn Messaging suggests different responses to unread messages for you to quickly choose from if needed.
The more AI is put to use, the more it will learn. Maybe we’ll see some exponential growth sometime?
Really thought the points on “digital muse” and “real-world inspiration” could do a lot for fiction — world-building, dialogue, etc. The “ideating” is also very cool, enabling students to talk to highly intelligence “tutors” of sorts WHICH ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDS THEIR STYLES AND GOALS. This would open up a whole new dimension of integrity though…
This topic was not one I had come across before, but found it very interesting. I was not aware of Adobe Spark either, but felt it was an excellent way to make a mobile presentation engaging and easy to access. Your organization of the information made it very easy to follow along, and it flowed smoothly.
Based on your analysis, educators will need to adapt their expectations and focus, and I think that’s actually a wonderfully positive shift. AI serves us best when it augments our own capabilities, and I think you’ve made a strong case for these tools enhancing creativity and ideation providing “writers” with novel ways to creatively source and combine stories. I particularly appreciated your analogy of the muse, that this technology could serve as inspiration for creation. I think MUSE would be an excellent name for your app!
Initially, I was left wondering just how relevant AI writing was to mobile learning, because I personally despise attempting to write on mobile devices, but once I understood that this technology was actually potentially bringing us beyond the act of writing the words, it became much clearer how this could apply to a mobile app.
I think it’s a reasonable question to ask whether having students write essays on subjects is really representative of best practice any longer and I believe your forecast is a perfect example of redefinition in the SAMR model for edtech integration – the highest form of integration when the new tool facilitates the creation of something entirely new and different.
I will be sharing this presentation with the English teachers at my school, and look forward to the conversations it generates.
Hi Jonathan,
First of all, fantastic presentation on AI in writing. It is reassuring to see how far AI has come over the past couple of years. I remember doing a writing project in ETEC 540 with our text prediction on our mobile devices and it was quite off when predicting what we were going to say changing the message completely, however I am sure that will develop to be more accurate and with machine learning; it will learn what we usually say and build algorithms around that. However, that aside, it is amazing to see how well a computer can complete a writing task for us, especially an essay, including creditable sources. I enjoyed the quote you included from Musk (2020) about how the world won’t go to hell in five years, rather is will just get weird. AI slightly concerns me in the fact that it is slowly replacing humans and sooner than later, why will need to know how to write our own essay, when you can do it in the push of a button and a quick two-minute wait. As technology and AI are getting increasingly smarter, what does that mean for humans? Will our jobs decrease or just simply change to generate and build these programs. Or for students, how will this technology be used in the near future? Will this be allowed in the classrooms or could it be used creatively. For instance, after you have written your own essay you could use an AI writing generator and look for ways to improve and up level your own writing. It could also be used for quickly finding creditable references to use in one’s own writing.
Focusing on Grammarly, I like using this program because it is very accurate and catches the smallest mistakes, compared to Microsoft Word that often misses mistakes that are spelled correctly but in the wrong context. I wonder how programs like Word will build over time and create more accurate corrections.
It makes me question if there are AI essay generators in multiple languages? On a bit of a different note, I am also now questioning if the accuracy of translators will increase over time as it is evident when a student uses these.
Thanks for sharing this forecasting presentation. It has really got me thinking about a varying ways we will be seeing AI in the near future.
Love when we have sci-fi becoming reality and AI is here to stay. It reminds me of a software mind map where you put in one software and finds comparable and associations of similar ones to that. It’s organic and same goes with ideas and full cohesion with which AI develops. However, I do like how AI-Writer provides you a list of citations that can help you curate any research or topic and dive deeper into the paper.
When discussing AI in education, philosophically speaking, would our minds go numb and be replaced by students dependant on AI, not allowing our critical analysis to grow. Similarly, Grammarly allows students to correct their thoughts and structure of texts they write, but one hopes that they learn from what is generated and not just accept and move on. The idea of AI should be to supplement and facilitate critical thinking and writing skills not replace it forever.
I do like AI where it helps with conversations and perhaps it will have a deeper rudimentary understanding on what humans are about and not just robotic algorithms.
This was a great read and like it when the more you research the apps and AI concepts, you mentioned, ideas come flooding in on how we can use it in our day to day lives.
Hi Jonathan,
Very cool project! This concept of AI writing was new to me and really kept me engaged throughout the entire website. Whenever I had a thought about a potential issue you addressed it which leaves me without additional questions.
I thought it was really cool that you found positive use cases for this kind of technology as I think there would be a lot of push back from educators to use this kind of software. If this technology is progression and our students will be going into the work force with this technology available then they should be able to use it and learn how to use it effectively in school. Like you said, this would encourage educators to shift their assessment away from the spelling and grammar and focus more on the ideas and supporting evidence.
Thanks for providing this critical overview of AI writing and providing some current applications along with the potential.
Hi Jonathan,
I liked the layout of your presentation. The Adobe Spark page is very mobile friendly and provides a clear view of your vision. There was a right balance of text and images that helped portray your message. I loved the idea of BanterBot. I wish I could have had that tool when I was in school. To speak to your characters to develop more complexities and background is such a rich resource to aid in one’s writing. This technology would also teach students how to ask questions to establish a strong understanding of the character. Of the techniques that you provided, do you currently utilize any of them in your practice?
I am very interested in seeing how this will develop in the future. I believe this will only make more persuasive writers in the future. Thank you very much for sharing this with us.
Thanks for the comments. I only just learned about pretty much all of this so I haven’t used any of it yet. I like Kylie’s suggestion of using this after writing your own essay as a way of seeing how you could improve your own finished work.
Most likely I think I would start pretty small and have students use it to fill out a graphic organizer for an essay outline as in grade 6 and 7 is can be quite difficult for them to fill in subtopics. I almost think it’s a disservice if we don’t introduce it in schools because some students will know about it while others will not and thus there will be an inequality in that regard. I think it’s likely that more and more students will learn about AI writing every year.
Some devices are not able to easily see the text in the AI-created essays. I have put them into a shared album here so that you can read them for yourselves.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/nhf8sqxtjsEnmQmCA