How can AI help us become better writers?

Originally published on April 3, 2024

Overview

In this lesson, students compare AI and human-generated texts to analyze the affordances and limitations of large language models. They’ll score, guess origins, and discuss differences, then decide which aspects to adopt or avoid in their writing. The lesson culminates in a discussion of what aspects of the AI-generated writing students should emulate in their own writing and what aspects they should avoid.

AI & Writing

60 minutes

Digital Materials

Objectives

After this experience, students will be able to

Evaluate model texts using a rubric.
Hypothesize which texts are AI-generated using evidence to justify their position.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of AI-generated texts in order to reflect on how they can improve their own writing.

Questions explored

How can we distinguish AI-generated text from human writing?
What are the strengths of AI-generated text? What are the weaknesses?
What elements are present in human writing that are not present in AI writing and vice versa?
How can we apply these learnings to our own writing?

Keyterms

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The ability of computers to imitate human-like thinking, learning, and problem-solving.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI, Gen AI)

AI that creates new content like text, images, music, and voice by itself, showing creativity.

Large Language Model (LLM)

A very big AI model that predicts many complicated sequences of text or code, using billions of data points. Some of these can produce text or code that looks more like what humans can do.