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At UCLA, Professors See 'Exciting Opportunities' in AI Writing Tools
Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
Generative AI is tech’s latest buzz word, with developers creating programs that can do anything from writing an academic essay about guitars and elevators to creating photorealistic paintings of majestic cats.
ChatGPT, a platform built by DALL-E 2 and GPT-3 founder OpenAI, is the latest one of these tools to go viral. But this tool can go far beyond writing a version of the Declaration of Independence in the style of Jar Jar Binks. It has the capability to write full essays on almost any subject a college kid could desire — creating another layer of complex technology that humanities professors now have to consider when they teach and dole out assignments.
\u201cSo #ChatGPT can easily write college essays now. Turnitin won't touch this. So are we ready to rethink assessment yet?\u201d— Colin D. Wren (@Colin D. Wren) 1670580381
While ChatGPT does have some limitations (It can only write up to 650 words per prompt), some students have taken to Reddit to talk about the potential uses and workarounds of the word limit to help them pass their classes. Ironically, another student even used the AI to write an apology email to his professor for using AI to write his emails.
One student wrote, “As finals are hitting, I’ve written 6 papers for people and made a great chunk of change. Same day turnaround, any size paper with perfect grammar and in depth writing plagiarism free is a pretty lucrative way to advertise oneself to a bunch of cracked out stressed college students.”
But despite the tool’s internet virality among desperate college students, UCLA professors told dot.LA that they aren’t worried about ChatGPT’s capabilities. Rather than viewing the technology as something they have to shield students from using, they see it as another potential tool in their arsenal and something they can implement in their classrooms.
\u201cI asked ChatGPT to write an essay on mental health. Returned essay immediately. College professors don\u2019t need to worry; the essay contained mostly weak verbs and no advanced grammar.\u201d— Heather Holleman (@Heather Holleman) 1670419435
“My sense of ChatGPT is that it's actually a really exciting opportunity to reconsider what it is that we do when we write things like essays,” said Danny Snelson, assistant professor of English at UCLA. “Rather than raising questions of academic integrity, this should have us asking questions about what kinds of assignments we give our students.”
Snelson tried ChatGPT out for himself, prompting the platform to write an essay about “the literary merit of video games that cites three key scholars in the field.” As it does, ChatGPT instantaneously churned out an essay which answered the prompt accurately and synthesized the arguments of three scholars in a compelling way. But Snelson could spot flaws in its work. The writing style was repetitive and the scholars the AI chose were not diverse.
“I probably will give my students the assignment on the first day of class to write a ChatGPT essay about a topic they know nothing about,” Snelson says. “Then have them discuss the essays that ChatGPT has written for them and what the limits of their arguments are.”
Christine Holten, director of Writing Programs and the UCLA Undergraduate Writing Center, said that she and other instructors are currently having similar talks about how to integrate these tools in a responsible way.
“One way is to allow students to use them,” she said. “Build them into the course, and allow reflection about the bounds of their use, what their limitations are, what are their advantages? How does it change their composing?”
Along with dissecting the platform’s limitations, Snelson also sees using ChatGPT as a tool to propel students’ writing even further. For example, one of the hardest parts about writing an essay is the first line. Having an AI write it for you can be a great starting point to push past the “blank page dilemma,” he said.
And while ChatGPT can write a passable essay on almost any subject, Snelson said students still need to have an understanding of the subjects they’re writing about. “Having a live conversation about Chaucer in the classroom, a student is not going to be helped by an AI,” he said.
“In the real world, you have access to information, you have access to writing tools,” Snelson added. “Why should (academics) disavow or disallow those kinds of tools?”
To that end, Holten said she recognizes that ChatGPT “raises the stakes” by circumventing tools that academics have relied on to detect plagiarism. But students turning in papers that aren’t their own isn’t new: Essay mills have existed for a long time, and Instagram is filled with pages that will sell students an academic paper.
“We have to do our part by trying to craft assignments carefully and making sure that we're not assigning these open-ended prompts of the sort that could be bought from paper mills,” she said.
It helps, too, that ChatGPT may already be working on a solution. Scott Aaronson, who works on the theoretical foundations of AI safety at OpenAI, said in a blog post that he’s working on a tool for “statistically watermarking the outputs of a text model like GPT” that adds in an “otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words” to prevent things like academic plagiarism, mass generation of propaganda or impersonating someone’s writing style to incriminate them, though it's unclear how far away this development is.
“We want it to be much harder to take a GPT output and pass it off as if it came from a human,” Aaronson wrote.
All of which explains why even despite claims that high-school English and the student essay are nearing their death knell, Holten thinks, ultimately, “The availability of ChatGPT is not likely to change very much.”From Your Site Articles
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Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
nat@dot.la
🌐Decentralizing Data & Vacations: Sony's Web3 Leap and Sensible Weather's KOA Partnership
09:58 AM | August 30, 2024
🔦 Spotlight
Happy Long Weekend Los Angeles!
Sony Group is making a significant push into the blockchain and Web3 space, leveraging its Sony Pictures and Sony Music divisions along with a new global incubator. The company has developed the Soneium blockchain through Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture aimed at accelerating Web3 innovation. Sony is launching the "Soneium Minato" public testnet and a developer incubation program called "Soneium Spark" to foster ecosystem growth and adoption. The initiative includes strategic partnerships with Web3 companies such as Astar Network, Circle, and Optimism. Sony aims to create a fan community centered on creators and connect diverse values through Soneium, with the ultimate goal of integrating Web3 services into people's daily lives. While the company acknowledges the challenges faced by Web3, including limited user adoption and the need for mainstream use cases, it remains committed to decentralizing the concentrated power of the current internet landscape.
In completely unrelated and more digestible news Sensible Weather, a leading weather protection provider that we’ve featured many times, has partnered with Kampgrounds of America (KOA) to offer Weather Guarantees at over 450 KOA Campgrounds across the United States. This collaboration allows campers to purchase weather protection for their outdoor experiences, providing peace of mind and potential reimbursements of up to 100% of their nightly rate if weather conditions exceed predefined parameters. The partnership comes at an opportune time, as camping has seen a significant increase in popularity, with active campers growing by 68% over the past decade. If you are looking to do some camping this fall make sure you look into Sensible Weather protections to ensure that unpredictable weather won't dampen (nailed it) your camping experience.
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LA Companies
- Space and Time, a blockchain data warehouse developer, raised a $20M Series A led by Framework Ventures. - learn more
- Miris, a provider of spatial content streaming solutions, raised a $26M Seed Round led by IAG Capital Partners. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Fika Ventures led a $4.55M Seed Round for Revenew, a San Francisco startup that aims to help digital platforms and marketplaces manage their payments and optimize financial operations. - learn more
- Bonfire Ventures participated in a $25M Series A for Supio, an AI platform for personal injury law firms. - learn more
- Amplify LA participated in a $2M Seed Round for Pryzm, a startup that provides tools and data to help businesses navigate government contracting more efficiently. - learn more
✨ Featured Event ✨
LA’s tech leadership is set to reunite after a long break! This two day summit will focus on building strong connections, sharing insights, and fortifying the local tech community.
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Gen Z Hates Ads—Unless They’re On TikTok. Here’s Why
11:01 AM | April 07, 2023
This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.
TikTok is awash with ads. There are microinfluencers pushing products that fit the latest microtrend. There are celebrity influencers launching their skincare brands. Ads that look like they were re-purposed from high-quality videos. And ads that try to mimic casual influencer videos.
For the past few years, marketing agencies have fully shifted their strategies to prioritize TikTok. On the surface, this might seem contrary to what we know about Gen Z, which is that they hate ads. Digital consumer research firm Bulbshare found that 99% of Gen Z skips ads when given a chance, and 74% feel there are too many ads.
But TikTok ads hit differently. A Statista study from March found that 38% of TikTok users are okay with ads in exchange for being able to use the app for free. And 28% of people have bought products promoted by celebrities or influencers, which is 10% higher than other non-TikTok users. Considering that 60% of TikTok users are Gen Z, it’s clear that these percentages reflect young consumers’ habits more than any other demographic.
So what makes TikTok advertising more potent than other methods of reaching consumers?
In short, TikTok ads are so ingrained within the platform’s influencer culture ecosystem it’s nearly impossible to differentiate them from other pieces of content.
For example, an influencer’s get-ready-with-me video might highlight beauty products a creator was paid to promote or shove in completely unrelated products, like Pop-Tarts in a makeup tutorial. Because these videos look identical to many of the non-promotional content on an influencer’s account, paid promotions are indiscernible from those that are unpaid. Even videos created by brands sometimes look like they were filmed by influencers. In fact, the Statistica study found that 15% have difficulty distinguishing ads from unpaid content.
Naturally, with so much success on TikTok, brands have opted to use it as a starting point for new marketing campaigns. According to Glossy, TikTok is now the testing ground to see how video styles, tones and messages are received. Whatever works on TikTok is then re-purposed across other social media platforms, like Snapchat and Instagram.
But some brands are also trying to figure out how to integrate ideas that succeed on TikTok into other platforms. This has led to a particularly awful type of ad where something that was ostensibly filmed for TikTok is presented in the wide-screen format people are used to seeing on YouTube or on TV. Take this Tractor Supply Company ad featuring country music star Lainey Wilson riding a tractor. The company specifically made the ad, which aired during the November premiere of “Yellowstone,” to be “TikTok style” as a way to appear approachable and down-to-earth. In other words, even ads that don’t appear on TikTok are adopting the video-sharing app’s native style.
It’s unclear how successful this transfer of content is, or if someone watching TV is receptive to this video style. But it’s a relatively low-cost test since filming a “lo-fi” video for TikTok and then re-using it across other advertising channels is less expensive than creating unique content for each platform. - Kristin Snyder
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
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