…you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. – Silas, in The Graveyard Book
7 links for the week ahead
- Donald Clark (13-05-2024). Is Teaching Becoming Obsolete With GPT4o? Do We Now Have a UNIVERSAL TEACHER?
- Daniela Duca (2024-06-05). Universities Need More Than Off-the-Shelf AI Solutions.
- Paul Graham (2023-06). How to Do Great Work.
- Andy Matuschak (2024-05-08). How Might We Learn?
- Ethan Mollick (2024-03-04). Captain’s Log The Irreducible Weirdness of Prompting AIs.
- Julian Stodd (2024-09-19). An Ontology of Havoc: The Disruption of Generative AI.
- Ben Thompson (2024-09-24). Enterprise Philosophy and the First Wave of AI.
AI-assisted academic writing
Nguyen, A., Hong, Y., Dang, B., & Huang, X. (2024). Human-AI collaboration patterns in AI-assisted academic writing. Studies in Higher Education, 49(5), 847–864.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly influenced higher education, notably in academic writing where AI-powered assisting tools offer both opportunities and challenges. Recently, the rapid growth of generative AI (GAI) has brought its impacts into sharper focus, yet the dynamics of its utilisation in academic writing remain largely unexplored. This paper focuses on examining the nature of human-AI interactions in academic writing, specifically investigating the strategies doctoral students employ when collaborating with a GAI-powered assisting tool… Findings indicate that doctoral students engaging in iterative, highly interactive processes with the GAI-powered assisting tool generally achieve better performance in the writing task. In contrast, those who use GAI merely as a supplementary information source, maintaining a linear writing approach, tend to get lower writing performance.
Use AI as a writing and thinking partner, rather than a content-generating machine.
Hoarding chalk
Once upon a time, not long ago, the math world fell in love … with a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoromo: a Japanese brand so smooth, so perfect that some wondered if it was made from the tears of angels.
Personal update
- This hasn’t been a great week, as I’ve spent most of it recovering from my fourth round of Covid.
- I’m putting the finishing touches on my Head space introduction to Generative AI for Academics short course.
- I’ve also been reviewing the lectures, lessons, and quizzes being created by the Physiopedia team for the AI in Physiotherapy MOOC that’s launching next month.
- Started the process of purchasing a range of software packages to support virtual reality and simulation in our school.
- Created a proof of concept showing how to enable rapid development and creation of CPD short courses using WordPress.
- Made plans to build out more of our school digital infrastructure next week.