Nearly a decade ago, the Associated Press began distributing articles written by an artificial intelligence platform.
Not surprisingly, that news sent ripples of concern among journalists. If a bot could turn structured data into comprehensible – even fluid – prose, where did humans fit into the process? Did this portend yet more ominous changes in the profession?
The intellectual work that goes into teaching often goes unnoticed.
All too often, departments rely on simple lists of classes and scores from student surveys of teaching to “evaluate” instructors. I put “evaluate” in quotation marks because those list-heavy reviews look only at surface-level numerical information and ignore the real work that goes into making teaching effective, engaging, and meaningful.
Since its release late last year, ChatGPT has reverberated through the academic mind like an orchestral crescendo in a Strauss symphonic movement. It has amazing abilities, and even greater potential. Even so, it delivers many of its responses in a monotone reminiscent of HAL 9000, the rogue artificial intelligence system in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
We often idealize a college campus as a place of ideas and personal growth, but we have to remember that danger can erupt without notice.
Martha Oakley couldn’t ignore the data.
The statistics about student success in her discipline were damning, and the success rates elsewhere were just as troubling:
We just looked at our office clock and realized that it was already March.
After we did some deep-breathing exercises and some puzzling over what happened to February, we realized the upside of losing track of time:
Spring break is only days – yes, days! – away.
We called it a non-workshop.
When Turnitin activated its artificial intelligence detector this month, it provided a substantial amount of nuanced guidance.
The pandemic has taken a heavy mental and emotional toll on faculty members and graduate teaching assistants.
Not surprisingly, tools for detecting material written by artificial intelligence have created as much confusion as clarity.
Students at several universities say they have been falsely accused of cheating, with accusations delaying graduation for some. Faculty members, chairs, and administrators have said they aren’t sure how to interpret or use the results of AI detectors.