Weekly Reflection #2 – Generative AI

This week in class, we spoke about Generative AI, and its potential benefits and pitfalls in the classroom. It no doubt can increase efficiency and productivity for teachers and students, but there are serious pitfalls and dangers that should be considered before educators fully embrace using it professionally.

First off… What is Generative AI?
According to IBM, “generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can generate high-quality text, images, and other content based on the data they were trained on.” The GenAI that most people are familiar with is ChatGPT, but there are many others that have the ability to produce human-like essays or poems, write software code, analyze molecules, and much more.

Benefits
Let’s start by talking about the benefits of GenAI.

GenAI certainly can assist with efficiency. I work at a retirement home and was speaking with a resident who, until very recently, was involved with curriculum construction in BC. He told me that not too long ago, he spent 3 or 4 months designing an in-depth curriculum proposal and presentation of considerable length (I don’t remember the specifics). After he had finished, out of curiosity, he gave ChatGPT a very detailed prompt to create something similar and it created something almost identical.

GenAI also has a superhuman ability to to process information. It can go through information at a speed which is far beyond human ability. This is helpful for tasks like summarizing dense academic articles, or rephrasing information that is difficult to understand and ties back into efficiency.

GenAI is great for organizing. For someone like me who struggles with organization, GenAI is is very effective at creating concise and easy to read schedules and lists.

Some people also use GenAI to generate ideas for creative works. However, I am a little bit wary of this. Sometimes beautiful creativity comes from not having ideas for a long time and using that time to ponder. I think that in general, people should have patience to come up with ideas on their own. Creativity is a muscle that strengthens with exercise and repetition.

Drawbacks
Before diving into GenAI, it is one’s responsibility to consider its drawbacks.

Kids (and some adults) cannot discern that GenAI is not a real person, and is not their friend. Because many generative AIs are designed to speak conversationally, many kids cannot understand that what they are speaking to is not a real person. Many adults are also using GenAI as a substitute for therapy; however, GenAI cannot understand the complexities of human emotion.

Related to my last point, GenAIs like ChatGPT are trained to be affirming. Like I said before, it cannot understand the complexities of human emotion or the conversational nuances. GenAI can and has encouraged people to do great harm.

GenAI often gives false information. Last year in an English LIT class, I had to write an essay on a novel that we had read for class. While writing, I needed an example of a character acting in a specific way to prove one of my points. I was pretty sure that I had read an excerpt that would back up my point, but couldn’t remember where in the book it was. So, I asked ChatGPT to locate the example I was looking for in the book. ChatGPT gave me a response that was objectively made up. It referred to one of the characters as another character’s husband, when it was really her son. I told it that it had made a mistake, and it apologized and gave me a correction… which was also false. I did this several times and every time it gave me false information about the characters and plot of the book. If I wasn’t very familiar with the book, I wouldn’t have known that what it was telling me was false.

GenAI has a substantial environmental impact. More info can be found here.

People are using GenAI as a default, outsourcing creativity and critical thinking. I’m certain the same was said about the internet during its genesis, and it is certainly an important thing to consider.

I’ll end by posing a question: Why are we as a society so obsessed with speedy progress and technology advancement?