Process Focus

When Stephen King famously wrote in his book ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, five the next day…fifty the day after that.” He critiqued the sleazy texts that plague almost every writer’s works. He also used the text to shed light on common errors writers make which serves as a hurdle between them and greatness. For instance, JK Rowling filled the first few parts of Harry Potter with a lot more quicklys and sternlys than required. Upon her later realization, she edited the following books with more colorful verbs and an active tone of writing. In the “Fifty Shades” series, EL James used adverbs in dialogue tags, a style choice that has sparked discussion on writing conventions by multiple critics. It is typical for any writer to fall prey to an excessive usage...

As long as we use AI as our assistant and not supervisor, AI will not take over humanity. Machines are not sentient beings and lack the capacity for self-awareness and emotions. This means that machines do not have an inherent desire to take over the world or any other similar motive. Most of these behaviors require consciousness, and intelligence is not the same as consciousness. Intelligence is the capacity to learn, reason, and solve problems. The technology we have today is artificial "intelligence," not artificial "consciousness." Although researchers in AI largely agree that we are nowhere close to achieving conscious AI, our perception of consciousness is more important than the question of whether or not these machines have it. Even though these programs are only intelligent (and not conscious), if we anthropomorphize them too much and interact with them intimately, many researchers agree that AI can be dangerous. AI agents don't have self-awareness and ...

Over the next few years, educators will continue to explore and use a variety of AI technologies to enhance their teaching methods. Educators at all levels will utilize easily accessible AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to create and improve lesson plans, grading rubrics, and visual content, and to seek feedback on written work. Furthermore, educators will discover AI tools tailored to their specific subjects, enabling more interactive and effective teaching. For example, mathematics teachers may find AI resources that facilitate learning geometry, while biology teachers could generate various visuals to explain the digestive system. However, it is important to note that some current generative AI technologies have a tendency to produce convincing yet inaccurate information, a phenomenon known as "hallucination." As educators become more familiar with the strengths and limitations of AI tools, they will make informed decisions about when to utilize these tools. Looking furthe...

As of early 2024, human beings remain the most effective plagiarism detectors compared to AI. The key reason for this is that generative AI technologies produce varying responses each time they are prompted with a question.  Paraphrasing is built into AI. Consequently, classical plagiarism detection methods, which primarily check for matching sources, are largely ineffective. While there are newer methods capable of detecting AI-generated text with high accuracy, achieving 100% accuracy remains a challenge. Relying on these newer tools can also lead to unintended and severe consequences. While it might be acceptable for a plagiarism detection tool to be lenient and fail to detect students' plagiarized work, a single false positive, where it incorrectly flags an original submission as plagiarized, can potentially permanently damage the teacher-student relationship. In summary, unreliable AI plagiarism detectors pose more risks than benefits. In an ideal educational environment, stud...

I f ChatGPT can complete an assignment for a student in two seconds, it's natural for the student to feel tempted to use it. Who remembers the paragraph on “responsible AI usage” in the syllabus when an assignment is due in an hour? No wonder this is educators' most common concern regarding AI.  When creating or revising assignments, educators should first rethink the learning objectives. According to Dr. Janet Rankin, director of the MIT Teaching and Learning Lab, educators should focus on what they want their students to achieve ( Feijo & Ouellette, 2023 ). AI benefits students only when the students already have three foundations: a strong foundation of knowledge to understand AI's output, an intellectual capacity to think critically about the AI's output, and the integrity to act responsibly with the information they receive. Assignments can be of at least two types. In some assignments, the goal is for students to learn for themselves a skill that AI can easily...