First I want to say Brandon did great taking over for Dr. Zamora not matter what he says or thinks lol. And thank you Dr. Zamora for creating this very insightful workshop.
The workshop was extremely helpful for me. Honestly I was a bit confused about the final project, what exactly to do and how to go about starting it but the workshop made things so much better. Everything now makes more sense to me. The examples that were given was very helpful and help me develop some ideas for my own story.
Working with ChatGPT and Sudowrite was very helpful as well. My first thought was to just use ChatGPT because that’s what I’m most familiar with. But playing around with Sudowrite, I’m definitely leaning towards using it for my final project. It seems to be easier to use, not that ChatGPT is beyond difficult to use but I’m more comfortable with Sudowrite. Here are a few ideas I have for the final project:
A student uses ChatGPT to cheat for an assignment (which they have been using for sometime). When the teacher realizes how great the assignment is, the teacher somehow figures out the student used AI/ ChatGPT and decides to use to for teaching.
Im still thinking as to how this short story could develop. Im always open to ideas.
My last workshop was interesting. I’ve never used ChatGPT or any other AI writing applications to write for me before this class. I never thought to do so, I always wrote my own stuff. SO, last workshop was entertaining, because most of what was written this time around was automated for me. I just put in a prompt for the AI and there it went, writing a whole synopsis for the resulting short story.
SudoWrite was interesting to use. As someone who was using it for the first time, I was surprised by how useful it actually is. Instead of just making stories up for you, it can actually give suggestions on how to fix your work, make your writing show instead of tell, expanding on your text, clarifying words, overall making your work flow better.
ChatGPT is still unnerving to me. It’s capable of coming up with all of these great stories and scripts by itself despite all of its flaws, and it frustrates me because it takes me forever to create something that decent, but this non-entity can do it within less than a minute.
I expect my final speculative microfiction project to be fun and eye-opening. I want to gain a new perspective when it comes to writing. I want to learn what AI can really do with writing, and then I want to remind myself that I should be able to do better than a non-entity when it comes to writing fiction. I am already a fiction author. I want to become an officially published fiction author, and I don’t want AI to be better than real people at producing well-crafted works. I expect myself to be writing my own works in full force by the end of this project, without the use of AI applications.
Personally, I hate endings. There’s always so much more to say and add to any experience, specially one such as this course. Alas! they cannot be avoided and we must digest everything spoken, written, shown, and apply it to our own little weird worlds.
Regardless of my feelings towards the end of this course, I’m excited for the final project. To write for class, whether its about First Year Composition and the standards they’re required to follow or reactions to research studies, there is no joy behind it. So when it was revealed that the final project for this is a short story, I felt a rush of excitement followed by some feelings of nervousness. As it is known to this class and any readers of this blog I am a poet. Though I’m not used to writing more than 30 lines of verse, I am not a unfamiliar with writing pages of prose. I am an avid gamer of the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons. (For the fans: Tiefling, rouge, which i sometimes multiclass with warlock with a criminal background). For theses stories I have to create extensive backstories with tons of hints at world building. I digress.
For the final project, I am set on on building upon the first prompt that ChatGPT gave me. “As Professor Martinez struggled with the pressure of his upcoming lecture, he couldn’t ignore the increasingly intelligent AI teaching assistant that seemed to overshadow him in the classroom.” My favorite feeling is reading a prompt and immediately see where the story can go. However, I cannot see how I can integrate the use of ChatGPT. When I write I tend to stay away from any outside influence (other than the vast amounts of literature and media I’ve consumed). That is what I believe my biggest struggle will be. I wont lie I’ve used ChatGPT to spell check and potential Grammatical errors but to use it influence my ideas and plot ideas……that’s a line I’m not sure I want to cross.
Last week was … something else! For as productive as I thought that the overall workshop was for the students I just felt like the guy manning the ship failed to lift up to the extremely high expectations set by Dr. Zamora. Sure, he’s a total heartthrob and played some intriguing song selections prior to the workshop, but he was also extremely chaotic and called on students who weren’t even raising their hand! Based on his entire “teaching” persona I wouldn’t be surprised if, at least, half of them weren’t there.
His assistant off to the side was literally feeding him lines and dinner! Like, what? Dude, you can’t even eat with your own hands?!? Gotta have your food fed to you because you think you’re better than everyone else?
The only confusing thing was why he’d loom into the breakout rooms so … menacingly. Sometimes he would just … stare, say nothing, and leave! Trust issues much? We’re all college students, not high school kids, we know how to do our classwork Mr. Guy. Oh, and your pre-class dance moves suck!
Besides all that, I am really excited to engage with this final project, and think that my micro-fiction will deal with AI in a very sardonic, jovial cynical sorta way. I want to poke fun at the idea of education as much as the perceived hopelessness that I feel a majority of this class, specifically, feels towards AI long-term. I have a few ideas, of which have to do with:
A teacher who loses it due to the pressures of AI, and threatens to go all “Michael Douglass out the car now” if his school does not go back to an in-person environment, only for his hallucinogens to wear off (or begin kicking in, the reader doesn’t know) leading him to the realization that it is an AI-run computer. Ultimately he decides to pull a Gregor Samsa because a warped and impersonal living is not one worth living.
A teacher who who is surpassed by each one of her students because they all use ChatGPT 5.7 to teach themselves how to be teachers, so she essentially becomes a tech maintenance janitor on teacher pay.
A group of apes discover an AI computer, which face scans them and concludes a scientific manner of teaching apes to adapt to human culture. After a few generations of secretly learning from such technology the apes take over the human race, overthrow AI, and reduce the world to a primitive, late-2010’s culture.
Or maybe I’ll get super dystopian with it and have Brandon run an AI-based classroom.
The workshop that was held last class on Thursday was extremely helpful and insightful. At first I was a bit confused about the overall idea of the final class project and what was expected from me but after spending an hour on zoom, I definitely have a better idea now. The examples were extremely helpful and also sparked some (maybe) a few creative ideas for myself when it comes to writing my piece.
One of the ways I was confused beforehand was the way we needed to implement Chat GPT within our writing process. But after Thursday’s class breakout rooms it is very clear how we should being using AI as an aid or a filler. Therefore I’m not so scared now but rather a little more at ease that it is too1. implemented as a source rather than an actual co-writer.
Here are a few of my ideas of the direction I would like to go with for my piece;
The never ending essay: a student uses Chat GPT to cheat out of writing an essay. The system crashes and begins to write the longest paper in history. He can’t use his computer for anything or make it stop. His professor gets the google doc essay constantly as the AI writes the essay all day and night.
The Good Teacher? : A teacher looses her own sense of identity and job culture as she relies on Teacher Bot to help her with everything in class management to grading. But that all changes and her real “skills” come to the test when she gets her yearly observation from the principal.
The Serial AI Dater: Instead of joining the real world and making real connections, Gabe relies on an AI for dating. He spends his weekends filter different AI chats to talk with different “types of women” all while he falls for one AI chat, but he has a hard time accepting that AI can’t love him back.
These articles assigned this week were very interesting to me. These articles show that AI is something that will become the norm and that AI will be the future. For me AI was only the worry in education but its also the worry everywhere else. Some people are excited about how AI is taking over and explaining the benefits but I have to say I’m still a little unsure about it.
AI is something that we can’t stop from coming in and making changes in the way we do things but the idea of it taking over everything is a bit scary and concerning. In the article Amazon opens its first cashier-less Go store outside of Seattle it talks about Amazon being a cashier-less store everything is done by your smart phone or machines that can check you out. Although that is pretty amazing to see where does that leave us humans that need work. Im pretty confidant that things like this will be expanded many other places. Then that leaves us only depending on AI.
Whether we are ready or not AI is taking over faster than we can process the thought of it.
These articles were refreshing because they’ve opened something that we haven’t considered too much – positives. Our younger selves thought of “robots” as lifesavers. No responsibilities besides our favorite hobbies to focus on. This idea shows itself in some of the articles.
In the articles, the writers explore how we can benefit from AI more so than our previously readings. One mentioned the use of AI hiring, voice tech, nano-degrees, etc. I think the most anxiety-inducing part of these “revolutions” is that these advancements sound too possible. Audio messaging is already a true lifesaver, but imagine taking it a little further? I’m fine for now, but I can see it coming and some already have.
Nano-degrees was an intriguing topic discussed and something that will allow education to be more accessible to those who don’t want the traditional college degree.
All in all, I appreciate that the writer shifts focus to the benefits of AI because we aren’t stressing over this for nothing to come out of it. It should be worth it. I believe this was a nice nudge towards motivation for being open-minded, yet still realistic. Additionally, they still acknowledge the inevitable presence of our bias when using AI, as well as the security risks. As I’ve stated and as the articles emphasized, this future is already happening around us.
In reading the articles for this week, all I could think of were the several places in the Bible where humanity is advised not to fall into a place of utmost dependence on anything or anyone but God. We should be able to use what He’s provided us with for what needs to get done.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
In many ways, we are already pretty heavily enslaved to technology. Anyone else ever walked into a pole or tripped on something because you were on your phone? Ever witnessed that happen to someone else? Chances are at least one of those questions, when honestly answered, is a yes. I admit, I’m a yes to both.
This said, there is a scary element to AI that seems to be unfolding behind the major headlines of today. Ever hear of the Federal Reserve’s new FedNow system? It’s essentially a newly announced federal central online bank. Seems convenient, right? Well, let’s remember who’s running it– the government. Let’s also consider what other countries have similar systems already in place, like China, which now has the power to freeze and shut down accounts or take money from accounts when any particular citizen so much as jaywalks, let alone criticizes the establishment.
And AI has the ability to track these things and record them– the man behind the server being free to sell that information because even if it is illegal, the value that information holds will get him more than enough money to escape with hardly a slap on the wrist.
Now, this is hardly the first time that the idea of a central bank has been thrown around, but it is something to take into account with regard to how technology and AI might affect humanity. We can definitely look back to the short film we watched, frames.
Here’s one of the other things with AI: when we begin to rely on it, it’s like a pot that’s too small for a plant. Hear me out– a large plant in a small pot gets root-bound, meaning its own roots begin to suffocate one another as the plant grows until it just can’t grow or survive. In essence, when we hold heavy reliance in technology, we suffocate our own roots as human beings. We become the dry shrub rolling around that Jeremiah describes:
Thus says the Lord: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
But how is AI a small pot when its “brain” is so vast? The answer to that question is similar to the one I asked before regarding walking into poles or tripping on something because you or someone you observed was on…
We don’t pay attention anymore. We don’t learn to observe and we simply rely on internet searches and how-to guides and videos. We don’t learn to discover with our own hands, through our own mistakes when the use of this technology is so unchecked. Its pervasiveness isn’t what’s necessarily bad– it’s the fact that we have not addressed where the healthy boundary is so that we as humans can still survive without it. In many cases today, I doubt most people can, myself included (which as a Christian is definitely something I should seek more accountability on, hence why I include that detail here).
And there’s a quote that struck me from a book I’m currently reading regarding this (though not specifically AI) regarding writing. I highly, highly, highly recommend Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle, regardless of your faith. Even if you’re not a Christian, there’s a lot to be learned on writing and art from the A Wrinkle in Time author. The quote that struck me though is this:
When language is diminished, I am thereby diminished, too. In time of war language always dwindles… We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. … As a child, when I came across a word I didn’t know, I didn’t stop reading the story to look it up, I just went on reading. And after I had come across the word in several books, I knew what it meant… We were capable of absorbing far more vocabulary when we read straight on than when we stopped to look up every word. … If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles…
Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle (p.29-31)
There is a reason that The Word was in the beginning. God spoke everything into existence. Jesus is the Word that John refers to at the beginning of his Gospel narrative, demonstrating once again how the three persons of the trinity were present before, during, and after creation was created. Like I’ve said before though, the power of life and death is indeed in the tongue, whether in speech or on paper or on a screen.
It’s a really busy week ahead for me so I’m getting cut a little short on my thoughts here for time’s sake. I’ll just leave you with one more verse and a question though:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:24-25, ESV
How is AI and other technology being used to encourage people, and is it actually doing a good job at it?
(I think particularly of the strong correlations between both certain imperative, life-saving advancements as well as those that plague the minds and mental well being of so many, especially young people).
Work, capital labor, is a longtime staple of our current society. Everyone has to participate in it at some point in their early adulthood in order to survive. Every time we walk into our stores we are served by living people working as store employees whose whole purpose is to make our customer experience pleasant and helpful. Every time we send in our help requests to an assistant service we expect a human to help us we our problems. And every time we click on a page we expect our future recommendations to be catered to our actual interests.
However, the reality is not so certain with the rise of Artificial Intelligence in the occupational field. Back in September 2018, the widely-relied on company known as Amazon opened its first AI-manufactured store called Amazon Go. The store’s basic functions have people walk in and swipe their phone on the entrance scanner. Their whole shopping experience is handled by a computer algorithm, picking up items that are then added automatically to their virtual cart. They can just leave and their purchases are virtually charged. There are no in-person attendants to move the transactions along.
This idea is bad for many reasons, one of which is the potential for real human workers to lose their jobs. People have made complaints before about self-driving cars and ai replacement, but with the aforementioned example of an artificial store system, this reality is not that far away from our lives. Dependence on artificial intelligence to resolve our problems and monitor our transactions is also a big problem. People’s 24/7 reliance on artificial algorithms to do their jobs for them can lead to their self-sufficiency depleting greatly. People already rely on the first social media posts that pop up on their feed for important societal information. Politics, Business, Education, Celebrities, Crimes, Finances, Economics. From personal experience, relying on the algorithm to give you the right information without self-reliability is a dangerous decision to make. The intellectual damage that this does to society has lead to constant dialogue ramifications; Dangerous ideologies being perpetuated, people with slumbering violent desires being led to act upon them and cause harm to multiple communities, people looking for safety within an online space getting harassed and abused by masses of cyberbullies and parasocial fanbases, and just everyday conversations being diluted by the great loss of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills to the reliance on artificial intelligence’s algorithms.
Ultimately, this is a bad idea. The technology we have today is not developed and monitored properly to implement a concept like Amazon Go ethically. I don’t think that this will ever be ethical to implement, especially because Amazon isn’t known for hosting the most humane work environments worldwide. Also, other job stealing ai implementations such as self-driving cars and trucks are just down right horrendous overall. That much doesn’t need any explanations.
The official class site for Dr. Mia Zamora's Spring 2023 "Networked Narratives" course.
