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A few years ago you could assume that if a student submitted an essay in your class, some human wrote that essay, hopefully the student in question. That’s no longer true, however, as AI-powered writing generators get better and better at producing intelligible text. What are we to do, whether we’re teaching writing or having students use writing to represent their learning?

On today’s episode of Intentional Teaching, I talk with Robert Cummings, associate professor of writing and rhetoric and executive director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi. Bob has spent his career exploring what’s coming in terms of teaching and technology, particularly in the field of writing instruction. These days, Bob is collaborating with computer scientists to figure out what role AI technologies might have in writing instruction.

I reached out to Bob to talk with me about the state of affairs in AI and writing, and we had a wide-ranging conversation that I’m excited to share here on the podcast.

Episode Resources:

Robert Cummings’ faculty page, https://english.olemiss.edu/robert-cummings/

OpenAI examples, https://beta.openai.com/examples

OpenAI Playground (account required), https://beta.openai.com/playground

Fermat Generative AI, https://fermat.ws/

Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer science, University of Oxford, https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/michael.wooldridge/

Peter Elbow, emeritus professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, http://peterelbow.com/

Is There a Text in This Class? by Stanley Fish, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674467262

Emad Mostaque on the Hard Fork podcast, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/podcasts/generative-ai-is-here-who-should-control-it.html

“Moore’s Law for Everything” by Sam Altman, https://moores.samaltman.com/

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans, https://amzn.to/3UNC1Ed

Music:

"The Weekend" by

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