I’ve been reflecting on what AI-supported writing might look like, partly in response to some confusion about what it is. Yesterday I suggested that AI-supported writing can be whatever you want it to be. Today I’m thinking about the style of the output versus the purpose of the output, and how this might help us to think differently about when and how to use AI to support writing.
One of the mistakes people seem to make is to take the position that all writing is about connecting with others. You can see this in all the hand-wringing about how AI-generated writing lacks some kind of human element. And I get that; writing is one of the core features of human communication and connection. When our writing is part of this connection, the style needs to fit the purpose.
But sometimes writing is simply about sharing information, as in providing instructions, or in a project status report. When I write a set of instructions for an assessment task for my students, the purpose is for them to understand what they need to do. In these cases we want our writing to be clear, concise, and effective; it’s not about making a connection. The style needs to fit the purpose.
I think this framing of ‘style versus purpose’ can be used to explore a range of concerns about AI-supported writing in academic settings.
Here are some examples:
- Personal reflections. When a student uses AI to write a reflection as part of their coursework, it’s not bad because the writing is sterile; it’s bad because generating the ‘correct’ output isn’t the purpose of the exercise. The purpose is to ‘see the thinking’ of the student.
- Lab reports. While ‘sterile’ AI writing might be OK for documenting methodology (where clarity is key), it would undermine the purpose of discussion sections that are meant to show scientific thinking.
Sometimes it might be reasonable to use AI for some part of the writing, and to merge that into a more personal piece of your own writing. Think of this as something like an artist working with mixed media; some of the piece will be AI-generated, some human-generated (yours), some other-human-generated (excerpts and quotes), and some an amalgamation of you-and-AI. It needn’t all come from the same source.
When we focus on purpose rather than style in different forms of academic writing, the appropriate use of AI to support writing becomes clearer.