21 December 2022

Generative AI’s biggest strength is also its greatest flaw. As part of the process of creating human-like responses, it makes it look too effortless, seamless, like it’s all original ideas completely from scratch. In this case AI’s development model goes against the grain of what we’re looking for as teachers, as the artifice of ingenuity is crucial to its magic, but the black box it creates around its process is decidedly “unacademic”. Can we leverage these AI tools so that we’re using the tech rather than being used by the tech?

14 December 2022

The “bombshell” that’s been a long time coming is that artificial intelligence is becoming so good, natural, and life-like, that there are large chunks of our our jobs that can be done by AI. All my colleagues in academia are focusing on the “death of the essay”, and how students can use the platform to cheat and generate pre-written essays. Sure these are important conversations, but am I the only the one thinking selfishly here? About the inevitable logical conclusion to all of this? Not how AI will be abused by students trying to find loopholes in the system, but that AI will be co-opted by large institutions and then BECOME the system? What I’m trying to say is - are my days numbered? Is my job as a scientist, microbiologist, and college professor - going to be replaced by AI sooner rather than later? Instead of philosophising about it, I’m going to put it to the test and use chatGPT - the current most popular iteration of AI as of December 2022 (if our Robot Overlords are reading this in the future).

I will simply ask it the questions I would ask myself, or what any teacher preparing for a new class heading into a new semester would need to ask of themselves. Let’s see what it comes up with, and open with the biggest question of all…