VU English Alum on Today Explained (plus five reasons to shun AI)
Villanova English MA alum Olivia Stowell '21 was recently featured on the Vox podcast Today, Explained, in which she spoke about AI in the classroom and described her decision to ban AI use in the courses she teaches as she pursues her PhD in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan.
Olivia described the genesis of her decision: "It was fall of 2023; I was the TA for a TV class with my advisor. They had an assignment where they had to write about social media reception... I noticed the repeated use of phrases and repeated sentence structures. I was like, this does not feel like student writing to me. I was pretty certain that a student had used ChatGPT and they ended up admitting to it."
Olivia noted that, at the time, "There was no institution-wide policy, and there still isn't, that I know of, so professors are kind of setting their own." Prompted by her experiences with ChatGPT as a TA, Olivia began to think critically about how she would treat the issue in classes she would lead-teach.
"Obviously," she notes in the podcast interview, "as someone who is terminally online and also studies media, I was, like, aware of chat GpT, right? And aware of the possibilities. But when it first came out, like when Dall-E and all the other ones kind of first came out... my instinct was like, it will kind of be a flash in the pan and then sort of be residual or recede from the front stage of public conversation. But when it became clear that that didn't seem to be the case for students – I felt like, okay, I have my gut reaction, but I need to also be informed.
"I spent a lot of time reading a lot of academic papers, journalistic articles, media reporting, things like that. And so I came to, after all of that research, my policy, which is, as I said, that I prohibit AI and I present students with five reasons that I think also represent kind of the five central ethical questions around AI for the university context."
We'd strongly encourage readers of this blog to listen to the full podcast to hear an in-depth discussion of each of the five reasons, but, as a jumping-off point, here are Olivia's five reasons not to use AI:
Reason one: This class is designed to improve your writing skills. If you’re not writing, you’re not improving.
Reason two: using AI opens up academic honesty issues.
Reason three: using AI does not produce reliably accurate results.
Reason four: ChatGPT has serious negative environmental impacts.
Reason five: Open AI and other AI companies have exploited workers.
You can listen to the full episode here, and/or read a transcript here. Our current students can read Olivia's helpful tips on PhD program applications here.
Olivia described the genesis of her decision: "It was fall of 2023; I was the TA for a TV class with my advisor. They had an assignment where they had to write about social media reception... I noticed the repeated use of phrases and repeated sentence structures. I was like, this does not feel like student writing to me. I was pretty certain that a student had used ChatGPT and they ended up admitting to it."
Olivia noted that, at the time, "There was no institution-wide policy, and there still isn't, that I know of, so professors are kind of setting their own." Prompted by her experiences with ChatGPT as a TA, Olivia began to think critically about how she would treat the issue in classes she would lead-teach.
"Obviously," she notes in the podcast interview, "as someone who is terminally online and also studies media, I was, like, aware of chat GpT, right? And aware of the possibilities. But when it first came out, like when Dall-E and all the other ones kind of first came out... my instinct was like, it will kind of be a flash in the pan and then sort of be residual or recede from the front stage of public conversation. But when it became clear that that didn't seem to be the case for students – I felt like, okay, I have my gut reaction, but I need to also be informed.
"I spent a lot of time reading a lot of academic papers, journalistic articles, media reporting, things like that. And so I came to, after all of that research, my policy, which is, as I said, that I prohibit AI and I present students with five reasons that I think also represent kind of the five central ethical questions around AI for the university context."
We'd strongly encourage readers of this blog to listen to the full podcast to hear an in-depth discussion of each of the five reasons, but, as a jumping-off point, here are Olivia's five reasons not to use AI:
Reason one: This class is designed to improve your writing skills. If you’re not writing, you’re not improving.
Reason two: using AI opens up academic honesty issues.
Reason three: using AI does not produce reliably accurate results.
Reason four: ChatGPT has serious negative environmental impacts.
Reason five: Open AI and other AI companies have exploited workers.
You can listen to the full episode here, and/or read a transcript here. Our current students can read Olivia's helpful tips on PhD program applications here.
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| Olivia Stowell MA '21 |
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