Category: Writing
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Revising AI-generated text leads to better outputs
The real advantage for knowledge workers using AI comes from using it as a writing partner – or more accurately – a thinking partner. And this is the value of working with AI; it can help get us out of our own heads.
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Writing with AI isn’t a binary proposition
We need to start developing a sense of taste for when to lean heavily on AI for content generation, and when we want to engage with it on a spectrum with either more, or less, AI-generated input.
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The buttonification of writing
When you introduce a feature that makes it simple to use AI to generate writing, everyone is going to use the feature.
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AI-supported writing is a validity issue, not a morality issue
Moving beyond debates about ethics and style, this post reframes AI writing in academia as a validity issue. When students use AI for writing, the key question becomes whether we can still make valid assessments of their skills and understanding. This practical framework helps educators determine where AI support helps or hinders educational goals.
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AI-supported writing and confusing style with purpose
Moving beyond debates about AI writing’s “human element,” this post explores how writing purpose should guide AI usage. From technical documentation to personal reflections, understanding the intended purpose of writing helps determine when AI support is appropriate. The post introduces a practical suggestion for evaluating AI writing through purpose rather than style.
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AI-supported writing can be whatever you want it to be
I wanted to challenge the idea that AI-generated writing is inherently sterile, so argued that the quality of AI writing largely depends on how we interact with it. Through better prompts, iterative feedback, and personal editing, writers can create AI-supported content that maintains human qualities while leveraging generative AI’s capabilities.
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Weekly digest 44
A weekly collection of things I found interesting, thought-provoking, or inspiring. It’s almost always about higher education, mostly technology, and usually AI-related.
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Writing with AI isn’t about eliminating the tedious and mundane
Engaging in the cognitively difficult, time-consuming, critical thinking parts of writing, supported by genAI as a thinking partner, may help to produce higher quality pieces, as opposed to seeing it simply as a way to produce more content.
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A notebook for seeing with language models
https://thesephist.com/posts/spc/ I want to share with you some of my early design explorations for what future creative thinking tools may look like, based on these techniques and ideas. This particular exploration involves what I’ve labelled a computational notebook for ideas. This computational notebook is designed based on one cornerstone principle: documents aren’t a collection of…
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Rebooting the reboot of the weekly digest posts
I’m going to make another attempt at publishing a curated weekly collection of artifacts that readers of this blog might find useful. The content will almost always have something to do with higher education, mostly technology, and usually AI.
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Zettlr is an open-source writing platform for academics
I’ve always been fascinated with the tools people use to write (I should write a follow-up to that post), and over the last couple of years that interest has been focused on what I think of as . Your one-stop publication workbench. From idea to publication in one app: Zettlr accompanies you while writing your…
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Most papers should be blog posts
“Most books should be papers, most papers should be blog posts, most blog posts should be tweets, and most tweets should be answers given in long-form interviews.” Robert Wiblin (2021)
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Hybrid writing is becoming the norm
Sarah Eaton has envisaged a “post-plagiarism era where we can’t know where the human ends and AI begins” – one in which hybrid outputs are the norm. To accept that, we must acknowledge the ways in which artificial intelligence might change the ways we understand concepts like cheating, and what constitutes good learning. Eva Alcock.…
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Building custom GPTs to provide feedback on samples of writing
Introduction “Our results show that i) ChatGPT is capable of generating more detailed feedback that fluently and coherently summarizes students’ performance than human instructors; ii) ChatGPT achieved high agreement with the instructor when assessing the topic of students’ assignments; and iii) ChatGPT could provide feedback on the process of students completing the task, which benefits…
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Lex: An AI-supported writing app
I’ve used the Lex writing app a few times for putting together a draft of longer pieces, when I would previously have gone to Google Docs. I like the experience and the interface, and have always enjoyed the experience. They’ve just put out an update to the product, called Checks. Checks will basically review your…
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Link: How are you using AI in writing?
https://www.publishnotperish.net/p/how-are-you-using-ai-in-writing “…quickly free-write letters of recommendation, allowing the AI tool to transform them into an appropriate format for the letter genre while correcting my spelling and grammar errors done in haste.”
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Link: The value of a long-term personal blog in the next phase of GAI
https://markcarrigan.net/2024/01/27/the-value-of-a-long-term-personal-blog-in-the-next-phase-of-gai/ “At this stage I’ve largely given up on social media to devote myself to blogging, in part because it feels like I’m helping realise something I will be very glad about further down the line.“
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Great titles do one of the following…
Great titles are PINC (pronounced “pink”). they do at least one of the following: make a promise, create intrigue, identify a need, or simply state the content. Michael Hyatt (2012). Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World.