Artificial Intelligence and Public Comment

rtraverdavis said:
This doesn't extend so much into the implications of using AI for public comment, but something I've been thinking about as it pertains to the experience of thinking and being human.

I just finished up grading all of my 8th grade English students' end-of-term argumentative papers. For these papers, students had to conduct research and write an argument in the form of a letter which they’d advocate for change in an issue of importance to them, and address and send that letter to a person or organization with the power and influence to affect said change. Many of them were excellent, and a few of them were real stinkers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual this year though was that, for the first time in my teaching career, three of these papers were without a doubt written by AI. They were immaculately composed, articulate, used a level of vocabulary and syntax that is extremely uncommon among 8th graders, and were completely devoid of personal touch—the sort of human quirkiness which is infused in every writer’s authorial voice, whatever that may look like for any given individual. I have no way of 100% proving these kids cheated, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence that goes beyond my having gotten to know them as thinkers and writers over the course of the year, so I know.

But my real concern, beyond just the cheating, is that these kids are at the vanguard of what will surely be a deluge of AI generated papers coming in from here on out, and what gets lost when students (or any of us) choose to push the easy button on complicated, challenging, but worthwhile tasks. When students choose to do that, they don't develop the critical thinking skills or grit to push through difficulty. Of course, it’s really difficult for 13 and 14 year olds to see that what they are learning to do in class is actually building life-long essential skills, despite many adults in their lives trying to connect those dots for them. I would also argue that adults lose the same sort of growth and independence that comes from struggling through challenge as well. But by turning to machines to do our thinking for us, there’s this other thing we lose that is less tangible and kind of difficult to articulate. These three papers I read were exceptionally polished and well-reasoned, but they lacked, I don’t know. They lacked soul. And it bummed me out. Maybe that it melodramatic, but damn it feels true.

I honestly believe that these leaps in AI are going to drastically increase the speed in which we are separated from the essential nature of what makes us human.
Click to expand...
Eye opening. A challenge for educators going forward for sure. I think wllm tried to find my elk spot using AI. It didn't work. That I know of. I hope you somehow navigate this. mtmuley
 
rtraverdavis said:
This doesn't extend so much into the implications of using AI for public comment, but something I've been thinking about as it pertains to the experience of thinking and being human.

I just finished up grading all of my 8th grade English students' end-of-term argumentative papers. For these papers, students had to conduct research and write an argument in the form of a letter which they’d advocate for change in an issue of importance to them, and address and send that letter to a person or organization with the power and influence to affect said change. Many of them were excellent, and a few of them were real stinkers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual this year though was that, for the first time in my teaching career, three of these papers were without a doubt written by AI. They were immaculately composed, articulate, used a level of vocabulary and syntax that is extremely uncommon among 8th graders, and were completely devoid of personal touch—the sort of human quirkiness which is infused in every writer’s authorial voice, whatever that may look like for any given individual. I have no way of 100% proving these kids cheated, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence that goes beyond my having gotten to know them as thinkers and writers over the course of the year, so I know.

But my real concern, beyond just the cheating, is that these kids are at the vanguard of what will surely be a deluge of AI generated papers coming in from here on out, and what gets lost when students (or any of us) choose to push the easy button on complicated, challenging, but worthwhile tasks. When students choose to do that, they don't develop the critical thinking skills or grit to push through difficulty. Of course, it’s really difficult for 13 and 14 year olds to see that what they are learning to do in class is actually building life-long essential skills, despite many adults in their lives trying to connect those dots for them. I would also argue that adults lose the same sort of growth and independence that comes from struggling through challenge as well. But by turning to machines to do our thinking for us, there’s this other thing we lose that is less tangible and kind of difficult to articulate. These three papers I read were exceptionally polished and well-reasoned, but they lacked, I don’t know. They lacked soul. And it bummed me out. Maybe that it melodramatic, but damn it feels true.

I honestly believe that these leaps in AI are going to drastically increase the speed in which we are separated from the essential nature of what makes us human.
Click to expand...
A brave new world indeed and an incredibly difficult place to be in as an educator. Middle school brings with it enough challenges as it is. Sadly, this scenario is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Best of luck.
 
rtraverdavis said:
This doesn't extend so much into the implications of using AI for public comment, but something I've been thinking about as it pertains to the experience of thinking and being human.

I just finished up grading all of my 8th grade English students' end-of-term argumentative papers. For these papers, students had to conduct research and write an argument in the form of a letter which they’d advocate for change in an issue of importance to them, and address and send that letter to a person or organization with the power and influence to affect said change. Many of them were excellent, and a few of them were real stinkers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual this year though was that, for the first time in my teaching career, three of these papers were without a doubt written by AI. They were immaculately composed, articulate, used a level of vocabulary and syntax that is extremely uncommon among 8th graders, and were completely devoid of personal touch—the sort of human quirkiness which is infused in every writer’s authorial voice, whatever that may look like for any given individual. I have no way of 100% proving these kids cheated, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence that goes beyond my having gotten to know them as thinkers and writers over the course of the year, so I know.

But my real concern, beyond just the cheating, is that these kids are at the vanguard of what will surely be a deluge of AI generated papers coming in from here on out, and what gets lost when students (or any of us) choose to push the easy button on complicated, challenging, but worthwhile tasks. When students choose to do that, they don't develop the critical thinking skills or grit to push through difficulty. Of course, it’s really difficult for 13 and 14 year olds to see that what they are learning to do in class is actually building life-long essential skills, despite many adults in their lives trying to connect those dots for them. I would also argue that adults lose the same sort of growth and independence that comes from struggling through challenge as well. But by turning to machines to do our thinking for us, there’s this other thing we lose that is less tangible and kind of difficult to articulate. These three papers I read were exceptionally polished and well-reasoned, but they lacked, I don’t know. They lacked soul. And it bummed me out. Maybe that it melodramatic, but damn it feels true.

I honestly believe that these leaps in AI are going to drastically increase the speed in which we are separated from the essential nature of what makes us human.
Click to expand...
I’ve been thinking about this lately, as every parent should. I agree that by not learning the basics and by doing something themselves they end up not gaining some valuable knowledge. That said, I’m sure the same argument was made when the hand-held calculator was invented. Being of two kinds on almost everything, I’m not sure that is a good counter give US education math scores.

Your job is definitely tougher, but you can adapt like they did. You could do simple things like tell them you will drop the score one grade if you run it through the AI and the score is over 95%. That would at least make them run it through the same algo as you and make changes. Probably not the best idea but simple. Or You reward those that actually do the work. The core issue is what are you trying to teach- in this case critical thinking and argument. Maybe incorporate AI into the process. Make them come up with the subject, run the idea through AI and ask them to counter argue the result. I suspect more things will be done in a face to face way if you really want to evaluate a person. Even this isn’t all that new. See medical boards for example.
 
rtraverdavis said:
This doesn't extend so much into the implications of using AI for public comment, but something I've been thinking about as it pertains to the experience of thinking and being human.

I just finished up grading all of my 8th grade English students' end-of-term argumentative papers. For these papers, students had to conduct research and write an argument in the form of a letter which they’d advocate for change in an issue of importance to them, and address and send that letter to a person or organization with the power and influence to affect said change. Many of them were excellent, and a few of them were real stinkers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual this year though was that, for the first time in my teaching career, three of these papers were without a doubt written by AI. They were immaculately composed, articulate, used a level of vocabulary and syntax that is extremely uncommon among 8th graders, and were completely devoid of personal touch—the sort of human quirkiness which is infused in every writer’s authorial voice, whatever that may look like for any given individual. I have no way of 100% proving these kids cheated, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence that goes beyond my having gotten to know them as thinkers and writers over the course of the year, so I know.

But my real concern, beyond just the cheating, is that these kids are at the vanguard of what will surely be a deluge of AI generated papers coming in from here on out, and what gets lost when students (or any of us) choose to push the easy button on complicated, challenging, but worthwhile tasks. When students choose to do that, they don't develop the critical thinking skills or grit to push through difficulty. Of course, it’s really difficult for 13 and 14 year olds to see that what they are learning to do in class is actually building life-long essential skills, despite many adults in their lives trying to connect those dots for them. I would also argue that adults lose the same sort of growth and independence that comes from struggling through challenge as well. But by turning to machines to do our thinking for us, there’s this other thing we lose that is less tangible and kind of difficult to articulate. These three papers I read were exceptionally polished and well-reasoned, but they lacked, I don’t know. They lacked soul. And it bummed me out. Maybe that it melodramatic, but damn it feels true.

I honestly believe that these leaps in AI are going to drastically increase the speed in which we are separated from the essential nature of what makes us human.
Click to expand...

We aren't far off from a day when AI written papers will have that "personal touch", and will have a "soul". In fact it's kind of here it's just not yet easily accessible. I can already feed an AI a directory full of thousands of documents, and in seconds turn around and ask it questions about the contents of the directory, and it will know it better than me. I could imagine feeding an LLM a directory of every post Nameless Range has ever written on here, and then asking it to write something about topic x in his prose, and neither you nor I, would be able to tell the difference and it will do it better than I ever could. It is and will be a crisis of identity - for individuals and a species, that think they are special.


Tyler Cowen recently had a podcast episode with Jonathan Swift - man who died in 1745. It wasn't perfect, but it was powerful, and where this is headed is weird and beyond our intuitions.

podcasts.apple.com

Conversations with Tyler: Jonathan GPT Swift on Jonathan Swift on Apple Podcasts

Show Conversations with Tyler, Ep Jonathan GPT Swift on Jonathan Swift - Mar 29, 2023
podcasts.apple.com

For me anyway, learning to think came from learning to write, and a generation was born today that may never have to write a thing. Goddamn that is dangerous. The work you do is important and I appreciate it.
 
rtraverdavis said:
I ran the papers through the AI detector and they all came back as more than 96% likely to have been AI generated.

My principal has advised me not to press the issue with these particular students because of factors that I won’t go into here. But I have already started putting together ideas for a short unit for the beginning of next year that will examine the issue and hopefully demonstrate to kids what they lose by turning to AI—and to show that their teachers are not as dumb as they think—as well as how I will address the use of AI for class assignments with parents. Brave new world.
Click to expand...
Just the other day, I asked a group of my sons friends (8 16-17 yr olds) if they use ChatGPT for school work. 100%, including my own, said yes.
 
rtraverdavis said:
This doesn't extend so much into the implications of using AI for public comment, but something I've been thinking about as it pertains to the experience of thinking and being human.

I just finished up grading all of my 8th grade English students' end-of-term argumentative papers. For these papers, students had to conduct research and write an argument in the form of a letter which they’d advocate for change in an issue of importance to them, and address and send that letter to a person or organization with the power and influence to affect said change. Many of them were excellent, and a few of them were real stinkers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual this year though was that, for the first time in my teaching career, three of these papers were without a doubt written by AI. They were immaculately composed, articulate, used a level of vocabulary and syntax that is extremely uncommon among 8th graders, and were completely devoid of personal touch—the sort of human quirkiness which is infused in every writer’s authorial voice, whatever that may look like for any given individual. I have no way of 100% proving these kids cheated, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence that goes beyond my having gotten to know them as thinkers and writers over the course of the year, so I know.

But my real concern, beyond just the cheating, is that these kids are at the vanguard of what will surely be a deluge of AI generated papers coming in from here on out, and what gets lost when students (or any of us) choose to push the easy button on complicated, challenging, but worthwhile tasks. When students choose to do that, they don't develop the critical thinking skills or grit to push through difficulty. Of course, it’s really difficult for 13 and 14 year olds to see that what they are learning to do in class is actually building life-long essential skills, despite many adults in their lives trying to connect those dots for them. I would also argue that adults lose the same sort of growth and independence that comes from struggling through challenge as well. But by turning to machines to do our thinking for us, there’s this other thing we lose that is less tangible and kind of difficult to articulate. These three papers I read were exceptionally polished and well-reasoned, but they lacked, I don’t know. They lacked soul. And it bummed me out. Maybe that it melodramatic, but damn it feels true.

I honestly believe that these leaps in AI are going to drastically increase the speed in which we are separated from the essential nature of what makes us human.
Click to expand...

what did you do with those three papers?

my brother teaches 12th grade english and 12th grade AP english and literature. he's come across a handful of AI submissions already. one of them was obvious, the kid submitted the whole thing with the prompt typed to ChatGPT at the top still there.

no doubt there is usefulness of AI in school work and real work, but obviously not for having something else do your school work. my brother basically tossed them back and said these are obviously chatgpt, you get a zero.
 
Nameless Range said:
We aren't far off from a day when AI written papers will have that "personal touch", and will have a "soul". In fact it's kind of here it's just not yet easily accessible. I can already feed an AI a directory full of thousands of documents, and in seconds turn around and ask it questions about the contents of the directory, and it will know it better than me. I could imagine feeding an LLM a directory of every post Nameless Range has ever written on here, and then asking it to write something about topic x in his prose, and neither you nor I, would be able to tell the difference and it will do it better than I ever could. It is and will be a crisis of identity - for individuals and a species, that think they are special.
Click to expand...
We had a company build us a document database a while back for our lease records, basically you just dump all the .pdfs in and it organizes everything and spits out what you need when requested. Add in the advancements in AI and I can see that being super powerful.
Nameless Range said:
For me anyway, learning to think came from learning to write, and a generation was born today that may never have to write a thing. Goddamn that is dangerous. The work you do is important and I appreciate it.
Click to expand...
This part is interesting, I don't see us ever getting to a point when humans stop wanting to express themselves. Sure AI can mimic art but that won't stop people from wanting to be creative. Now you have to practice a skill to learn it and those that have no interest in learning the skill won’t do the necessary work, but I'm not all that sure if that's a big change. I'm constantly shocked by the inability of folks to communicate effectively via email, giving basic step by step directions is totally beyond the skill set of a lot of folks. Folks that went to college. 🤷‍♂️

Definitely interesting times for educators.

@rtraverdavis have you considered in class writing? Everything must be written in the classroom?
 
Last edited:
Ben Lamb said:
As I continue to tell people, who don't seem to grasp the idea, "Social media isn't real." The same can be said for form emails, AI emails etc. Quantity is no match for quality.

Looking someone in the eyes, understanding what makes them tick and gaining their trust is.
Click to expand...

does this also mean we have to shake peoples hands?

giphy.gif
 
TOGIE said:
does this also mean we have to shake peoples hands?

View attachment 277270
Click to expand...

No Touching!!! GIF - Arresteddevelopment Notouching ...
 
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