ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving
by iSophist · 8 things on Twos
- The release of OpenAI's, ChatGPT interface generated a sudden flurry of discussion about how we teach students to write in school. John Warner is the author of Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, and The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing. To cut to the chase, rather than having students wrestle with the demands of trying to express themselves inside a genuine rhetorical situation, they were instead producing writing-related simulations.
- ChatGPT is an algorithm trained on a set of data to respond to questions in natural language. The algorithm does not know anything. All it can do is assemble patterns according to other patterns it has seen when prompted by a request. It is, at its core, a bullshitter. You give it a prompt and it responds with a bunch of words that may or may not be responsive and accurate to the prompt. It will be written in fluent English syntax.
- ChatGPT was put to the task of trying to answer some college-level writing assignments. For three of the four subjects - research methods, U.S. history and law - the AI passed with a C or better grade. In two categories (research methods, law), the AI beat one or more of the humans. The subject it tanked was creative writing. It would not tank creative writing anymore.
- ChatGPT can create sentences that sound like real-life people. The AI can also create sentences from literature-based English exams. ChatGPT is based on the open-source chat app, which has more than 100 million users. Click here for more information about ChatG PT and how you can use it in your life.
- Many are wailing that this technology spells the end of high school English. I cannot emphasize this enough: ChatGPT is not generating meaning. It is arranging word patterns. I could tell GPT to add in an anomaly for the 1970s - like the girl looking at Billy's Instagram - and it would introduce it into the text.
- It is a mistake to think we can out-prompt the AI. There are some things the AI is not good at yet. But for the typical school assignment, it reliably turns out passable results. The reason why I'm confident my pedagogy is not vulnerable to ChatGPT is because I do not only grade the end product, but instead, value the process it takes to get there.
- The AI does not generate excellent work, particularly not without the kind of tweaking you see me doing above. A student doing an end run around school would likely accept the first thing the bot gives it, turn it in, and hope for the best. We may have to get used to not rewarding pro forma work that goes through the motions with passing grades. This process of ungrading or alternative grading has been gaining significant momentum in recent years.
- The appearance of this tech is so shocking is because it forces us to confront what we value, rather than letting the status quo churn along unexamined. For me, writing is simultaneously expression and exploration. It is only through the writing that I can fully understand what I think. As human, we are wired to communicate. We are also wired for play. Writing allows us to do both of these things at the same time.