The teacher in me couldn't help thinking while I was reading that in writing this, you have (perhaps inadvertently) generated another excellent model of the "Who Are We?" (Rhetorical Analysis of a Commercial) writing experience from your book The Writer's Practice that I can now share with my students as an example of how to explore a commercial for subtext.
This is a good pick up. The opening of the post is exactly what I try to get students to do as they look at the commercial texts they choose. I would say I did in consciously, because it's the kind of rhetorical move that I know how to employ, but I can't claim that I was thinking of TWP while I was doing it, so it was also subconscious on some level.
I agree these commercials are awful, but I don't worry too much about a world where everything (writing, graphic design, teaching, etc.) is machine-generated. Instruction booklets and such might become largely AI generated, but I believe people desire human connection and recognize real art. Students will want human teachers; all of us will want to see true creativity.
I tend to agree that this is what people will want, but I am fairly worried we are headed towards a world where the systems students and teachers work within will not provide these opportunities, and that they may be preserved for those who can afford to pay for the human experience, rather than being relegated to the life of algorithms.
The disconnect represented in this ad and others like the iPad cruncher ad is an interesting manifestation of just how disconnected big tech is from how AI looks to most of us. It is bad enough when the execs open their mouths. But even their marketers can't figure out how to sell it without making everyone mad.
I've only started noodling on these issues, but I wonder if some of this is rooted in that they don't really know what this stuff is for. Like, it's cool, and novel, but that novelty doesn't translate to interest or utility, so one of the key drivers of how you would market something is missing from the equation. Jane Rosenzweig always asks "What problem are we trying to solve?" in using the AI and clearly the fan note to a hero is not a problem.
I think that's right. Very cool when you first see it, but then what?
Max Read has a great piece pointing out that the only real use case so far with LLMs is talking to a talking computer, which gets old quickly. I think there is evidence that generating decent computer code is another. Beyond those two, I'm not so sure. Sure, better natural language interfaces are nice, but like Dave Karpf says, a slightly better Clippy or Alexa does not a general purpose technology make.
I love, and as a lifetime English teacher, I live, work, sleep, and survive on, the spirit of this essay. It's entirely what the automation merchants miss, and don't know, and it's why they don't teach.
BUT we risk accusation of cognitive bias when we say we'll lose our jobs because of this tool. A guild mentality will provoke division and hostility that we are not equipped to resolve. The proliferation of signs that electronic media have produced almost mandates an automated way of handling parts of it.
And the price of education (if you had a child now, and you were a teacher, how would you be planning to pay for their college?) only sharpens the general will to make it run leaner.
Therefore, let writing be what writing is: a technology that shapes thinking (per Walter J. Ong's wise assessment). And let that shaping evolve with the tools by writing, together, about it. I've been interested when I've compared my comments on a student's essay with the bot's not-worthless ones.
Will we fight it because we fear its engineers will replace us? No. We know where chanting "you will not replace us" leads. Instead, let's use it, openly, and together, and critically. It will have its uses. We will find that sweet spot.
The thing that terrifies me nowadays as a middle aged software engineer, is how quickly these things ship. We have all become the modern world’s Beta testers without ever knowing it. We do use AI tools to help write code from time to time and even more so when stuff needs to ship, faster, faster. AI should be the tool we enjoy using to help us research but not do the whole job for us. In fact it’s worse than cheating because I can recall using cheat codes as a kid playing video games and that was harmless but what we have now is positively dangerous.
Auto grading suits me for extraordinarily low-level tasks in education, the kind that are generally complete/incomplete. Anything else I need to see their work to understand their thought process.
Concerning not knowing what has been lost, the same idea applies to cursive handwriting learning. We learned after taking cursive writing out of schools that it's important to brain development, but offering it in schools has still not returned to the level it once was.
I actually looked into this to a fairly specific extent for one of the chapters in my next book and in my opinion, the idea that cursive writing specifically is important to brain development is significantly overstated and not borne out by the evidence from the studies that have been done. There is evidence that certain regions of the brain are activated by writing in cursive that aren't activated by typing, but we don't have any direct correlational evidence of the actual significance of these differences. Whether or not there's any difference between printing letters and writing cursive is even murkier territory. There's some indications that cursive is helpful for fine motor development, but one study found that if fine motor development is the goal, it's inferior to knitting and video games, skills we don't teach in school. The chapter in the book is about tools of automation and how they impact the experience of writing, and my view is that cursive is a tool that is useful for some, and a hindrance to others (that was me). In terms of learning to write, it has extremely limited importance. As a vehicle for brain development, it may have some utility, but there is nothing specifically unique about writing in cursive.
Illuminating, as always.
The teacher in me couldn't help thinking while I was reading that in writing this, you have (perhaps inadvertently) generated another excellent model of the "Who Are We?" (Rhetorical Analysis of a Commercial) writing experience from your book The Writer's Practice that I can now share with my students as an example of how to explore a commercial for subtext.
This is a good pick up. The opening of the post is exactly what I try to get students to do as they look at the commercial texts they choose. I would say I did in consciously, because it's the kind of rhetorical move that I know how to employ, but I can't claim that I was thinking of TWP while I was doing it, so it was also subconscious on some level.
At least we can love that everyone hated it
It is very encouraging!
I agree these commercials are awful, but I don't worry too much about a world where everything (writing, graphic design, teaching, etc.) is machine-generated. Instruction booklets and such might become largely AI generated, but I believe people desire human connection and recognize real art. Students will want human teachers; all of us will want to see true creativity.
I tend to agree that this is what people will want, but I am fairly worried we are headed towards a world where the systems students and teachers work within will not provide these opportunities, and that they may be preserved for those who can afford to pay for the human experience, rather than being relegated to the life of algorithms.
Agreed.... sadly.
The disconnect represented in this ad and others like the iPad cruncher ad is an interesting manifestation of just how disconnected big tech is from how AI looks to most of us. It is bad enough when the execs open their mouths. But even their marketers can't figure out how to sell it without making everyone mad.
I've only started noodling on these issues, but I wonder if some of this is rooted in that they don't really know what this stuff is for. Like, it's cool, and novel, but that novelty doesn't translate to interest or utility, so one of the key drivers of how you would market something is missing from the equation. Jane Rosenzweig always asks "What problem are we trying to solve?" in using the AI and clearly the fan note to a hero is not a problem.
I think that's right. Very cool when you first see it, but then what?
Max Read has a great piece pointing out that the only real use case so far with LLMs is talking to a talking computer, which gets old quickly. I think there is evidence that generating decent computer code is another. Beyond those two, I'm not so sure. Sure, better natural language interfaces are nice, but like Dave Karpf says, a slightly better Clippy or Alexa does not a general purpose technology make.
Here is the Max Read link: https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-point-of-ai-is-to-talk-to-a-cool
I love, and as a lifetime English teacher, I live, work, sleep, and survive on, the spirit of this essay. It's entirely what the automation merchants miss, and don't know, and it's why they don't teach.
BUT we risk accusation of cognitive bias when we say we'll lose our jobs because of this tool. A guild mentality will provoke division and hostility that we are not equipped to resolve. The proliferation of signs that electronic media have produced almost mandates an automated way of handling parts of it.
And the price of education (if you had a child now, and you were a teacher, how would you be planning to pay for their college?) only sharpens the general will to make it run leaner.
Therefore, let writing be what writing is: a technology that shapes thinking (per Walter J. Ong's wise assessment). And let that shaping evolve with the tools by writing, together, about it. I've been interested when I've compared my comments on a student's essay with the bot's not-worthless ones.
Will we fight it because we fear its engineers will replace us? No. We know where chanting "you will not replace us" leads. Instead, let's use it, openly, and together, and critically. It will have its uses. We will find that sweet spot.
Success!
The thing that terrifies me nowadays as a middle aged software engineer, is how quickly these things ship. We have all become the modern world’s Beta testers without ever knowing it. We do use AI tools to help write code from time to time and even more so when stuff needs to ship, faster, faster. AI should be the tool we enjoy using to help us research but not do the whole job for us. In fact it’s worse than cheating because I can recall using cheat codes as a kid playing video games and that was harmless but what we have now is positively dangerous.
Auto grading suits me for extraordinarily low-level tasks in education, the kind that are generally complete/incomplete. Anything else I need to see their work to understand their thought process.
Concerning not knowing what has been lost, the same idea applies to cursive handwriting learning. We learned after taking cursive writing out of schools that it's important to brain development, but offering it in schools has still not returned to the level it once was.
I actually looked into this to a fairly specific extent for one of the chapters in my next book and in my opinion, the idea that cursive writing specifically is important to brain development is significantly overstated and not borne out by the evidence from the studies that have been done. There is evidence that certain regions of the brain are activated by writing in cursive that aren't activated by typing, but we don't have any direct correlational evidence of the actual significance of these differences. Whether or not there's any difference between printing letters and writing cursive is even murkier territory. There's some indications that cursive is helpful for fine motor development, but one study found that if fine motor development is the goal, it's inferior to knitting and video games, skills we don't teach in school. The chapter in the book is about tools of automation and how they impact the experience of writing, and my view is that cursive is a tool that is useful for some, and a hindrance to others (that was me). In terms of learning to write, it has extremely limited importance. As a vehicle for brain development, it may have some utility, but there is nothing specifically unique about writing in cursive.
Good to know. Thanks