This is so wonderful! I want to use this as the introductory essay for my Fall ‘23 Writing in a Networked World course!! 🦾 (And thank you for the nod!) ☺️
Your thinking and writing on AI in "Human in a Post-Human World" have been a lifeline for at least a year, now. I used several pieces in the class. So thank *you*, Amy.
I like this idea of using Chat responsibly and as a discussion prompt. One comforting thing is that AI can’t yet duplicate high level scholarly discourse or generate a new idea for literary scholarship. This bodes well for upper level classes, but it does seem like lower level courses need reframing with more emphasis on refining first drafts? And some students will rely on AI for “good enough” work. Lots more to dig into when I have time!
How to make writing class a place where expedience and outputs aren't the point? In my lower level classes at least, I want the writing to benefit the *writer* first and foremost, for students to feel transformed by the experience of having written.
Really smart here, and, yes, great Amy letter shout-out! As someone who went through a standard PhD English program and having to teach Intro to Comp/Writing for years as a grad student (and I won 2 grad teaching awards while doing so!), yet it was only a semester's practicum and then throw one into the deep-end to devise a course/teach it, I am blown away by the desire/need to re-think my writing pedagogy after this piece. That was a really long, non-ChatGPT sentence, fyi!
As Carol works through her course, I like the sense of human agency that compels AI "to try again. . . to tweak this or that," and in the process a writer learns about what they "really want to say," etc. There is a human involved here, moving forward the AI.
When I start a writing assignment in class, I ask students to put together things they are excited about, even if they don't make sense on a conscious level. My sense is that there is an organizing unconscious, and that students, when left open to channel weirdness, will create surprising juxtapositions and ideas that are eventually workable. Maybe AI will do that in the future? I worry that such invention will be lost, says the luddite.
Part of me is a post-structuralist Marxist (yeah, I went there), I get this citation in the essay: "What if language were not an instrument of expression or mimesis but a field of semiotic, sonic, syntactic, and other relations that at once create the possibility and generate the instability of identity?" asks poet/critic John Yao." There is no self that is not mediated, but, as an historian, I think we need to explore how selves/moments/regimes are historically mediated. Will Chat have its own historical mediations? Will it have its own ideological biases based on programming? Curious.
You honor me with your thoughtful commentary, Dina.
The significance of the Yao quote for me is not the mediated self, it's the instability of what we presume to be the self. Loosening the grip.
Chat will have ALL the ideological biases that humans have. There's no stopping historical mediations, which will continually change because they are, after all, interpretations.
As I mentioned at lunch, there is a reactionary movement to demarcate "my own truth," etc. It's not the same as an earlier incarnation of "my real self" that permeated the aughts in response to earlier identity politics, etc. Truth becomes the noun, the subject, usurping identity, or "the real self." Perhaps an interesting response to AI where truth itself is suspect. Derrida, if he were alive, would have so much fun with this!
I went to a Derrida lecture on "The Lie." There is probably work there, but I was breaking up with a boyfriend during "The Lie" lecture, and didn't fully take it in. We broke up during the lecture over a lie! Gotta love it. Meta ain't good when experienced!
This is so wonderful! I want to use this as the introductory essay for my Fall ‘23 Writing in a Networked World course!! 🦾 (And thank you for the nod!) ☺️
Your thinking and writing on AI in "Human in a Post-Human World" have been a lifeline for at least a year, now. I used several pieces in the class. So thank *you*, Amy.
I like this idea of using Chat responsibly and as a discussion prompt. One comforting thing is that AI can’t yet duplicate high level scholarly discourse or generate a new idea for literary scholarship. This bodes well for upper level classes, but it does seem like lower level courses need reframing with more emphasis on refining first drafts? And some students will rely on AI for “good enough” work. Lots more to dig into when I have time!
"Yet" is the key term, indeed.
How to make writing class a place where expedience and outputs aren't the point? In my lower level classes at least, I want the writing to benefit the *writer* first and foremost, for students to feel transformed by the experience of having written.
Really smart here, and, yes, great Amy letter shout-out! As someone who went through a standard PhD English program and having to teach Intro to Comp/Writing for years as a grad student (and I won 2 grad teaching awards while doing so!), yet it was only a semester's practicum and then throw one into the deep-end to devise a course/teach it, I am blown away by the desire/need to re-think my writing pedagogy after this piece. That was a really long, non-ChatGPT sentence, fyi!
As Carol works through her course, I like the sense of human agency that compels AI "to try again. . . to tweak this or that," and in the process a writer learns about what they "really want to say," etc. There is a human involved here, moving forward the AI.
When I start a writing assignment in class, I ask students to put together things they are excited about, even if they don't make sense on a conscious level. My sense is that there is an organizing unconscious, and that students, when left open to channel weirdness, will create surprising juxtapositions and ideas that are eventually workable. Maybe AI will do that in the future? I worry that such invention will be lost, says the luddite.
Part of me is a post-structuralist Marxist (yeah, I went there), I get this citation in the essay: "What if language were not an instrument of expression or mimesis but a field of semiotic, sonic, syntactic, and other relations that at once create the possibility and generate the instability of identity?" asks poet/critic John Yao." There is no self that is not mediated, but, as an historian, I think we need to explore how selves/moments/regimes are historically mediated. Will Chat have its own historical mediations? Will it have its own ideological biases based on programming? Curious.
Thanks for this, Carol. So much to ponder/
You honor me with your thoughtful commentary, Dina.
The significance of the Yao quote for me is not the mediated self, it's the instability of what we presume to be the self. Loosening the grip.
Chat will have ALL the ideological biases that humans have. There's no stopping historical mediations, which will continually change because they are, after all, interpretations.
As I mentioned at lunch, there is a reactionary movement to demarcate "my own truth," etc. It's not the same as an earlier incarnation of "my real self" that permeated the aughts in response to earlier identity politics, etc. Truth becomes the noun, the subject, usurping identity, or "the real self." Perhaps an interesting response to AI where truth itself is suspect. Derrida, if he were alive, would have so much fun with this!
Yeah, the problem begins when we equate identity with self.
I went to a Derrida lecture on "The Lie." There is probably work there, but I was breaking up with a boyfriend during "The Lie" lecture, and didn't fully take it in. We broke up during the lecture over a lie! Gotta love it. Meta ain't good when experienced!