A revolution in the writing process is quietly underway on the internet, writes Dr Lucinda McKnight, Senior Lecturer in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum), Deakin University. Much of what we read on the internet now is written by machines, not humans. Artificial intelligence (AI), through natural language processing (NLP) and generation (NLG) can now write like humans. This is a hurdle that even recently humans imagined computers could never leap and it has major implications for education. If the writing of the future is to be done by machines, what should children be taught? AI can now be trained on vast datasets. Imagine a writer who has read and processed everything on the internet. That’s an AI writer. It has read a huge amount of text and is therefore able to make reliable predictions about sequences of words that make ‘sense’ to humans, even if the machines do not really ‘understand’ what they have written. Here is an example of an AI authored text, for a website homepage, created in seconds when I told the AI I need a blurb for a personal trainer: I am experienced with personal training, athletic performance, and nutrition. This includes working with children, pregnant women, older adults, people with disabilities, athletes, and anyone looking to achieve a competitive edge, improve their overall health, and overall performance. I also have an interest in alternative health, including wellness coaching and nutrition counselling. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family, the outdoors, and writing.
Relying on AI is nothing new. For decades humans have been writing with AI, in the form of spelling and grammar checkers built into word processors. Early on, teachers tried to ban or discount these services, but over time they have become accepted and routine and have expanded into widely used apps such as Grammarly. This is likely to be the case with AI writers too, as what seems extraordinary now becomes mundane. Robot writers Already AI is writing reports, newsletters, articles, slogans, scripts, poetry and novels. Its capabilities are increasing 32 | independent education | issue 2 | Vol 51 | 2021
dramatically. In 2019 the New Yorker published a famous article assessing GPT-2, an NLG created by OpenAI, funded by well-known businessman Elon Musk. It found it rather lacking. In 2020, new version GPT-3 wrote a whole article for The Guardian newspaper entitled “A robot wrote this whole article: Are you scared yet human?”. I encourage you to search for and read these articles online to assess how quickly things are changing. Humans are on the brink of a major rethink about what writing actually is and what needs to be taught in schools so that students have useful skills for the future. Computers are good at doing what they are told. They follow rules and formulas. Alas, in a dead-end move, writing education for children in Australia has become more formulaic, as a result of NAPLAN. We are teaching students to write in ways that have been superseded by machines. An education in the basics, while essential, is not enough to make humans valuable in the writing scenarios of the future. Need to break rules Humans can innovate, they have real purposes and needs. They feel emotion, including compassion, and can empathise. They perceive unkindness and cruelty. They can be funny – they understand humour, nuance, subtlety and irony. Humans understand multiple complex contexts and motivations. They make informed, evaluative judgements: they can edit and refine. They can think and act in ethical ways, in line with their consciences and human psychology. Fundamentally, humans can break rules. The challenge for curriculum designers and teachers is to come up with a writing education that makes the most of these features, rather than crushing them through rote learning and rote writing. Teachers need to grasp how writing is changing and find ways for their students to fulfil their potential as writing partners with AI. Drilling in basic grammar and spelling, formulas for writing such as TEEL (Topic, Evidence, Elaboration, Link) or the five-paragraph essay, which only permits three ideas in three body paragraphs, are limited distortions of the writing of which humans are capable. A focus on expository writing or analysis of texts rather than more creative forms of writing will not serve writers
