My Evolving Position on AI Writing
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As a professor of scientific communication, I feel compelled to take a stand on how we in engineering and science should approach using artificial intelligence in our documents. One reason is to help my university students and professional audiences to keep up with the revolutionary advances occurring in scientific writing. For forty years, from 1983 until 2023, I taught in a field with incremental advances. Then, in November 2023, OpenAI shot a meteor into the discipline. Another reason for stating my position is to help those same students and professionals avoid mistakes that could injure their careers. Given that we are in the middle of a huge transient phase, the five "steady-state" principles of my position will no doubt require revisions, perhaps before the next semester end. Still, here is my stand.
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Principle 1. All engineers and scientists should learn traditional ways and AI strategies for generating documents. Knowing a traditional way to perform the four main phases of the writing process puts you in the position to assess the efficacy of what AI produces. In other words, you have a benchmark
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Photo from newsonline.library.vanderbilt.edu
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Principle 2. Take responsibility for the documents that you author and be transparent on how you use AI. This principle is the same stance taken by the journal Nature [1] on articles that they will consider for publication. Being responsible for the documents that bear your name means that you stand by the precision of the technical content and by how you have credited others for that content. Being transparent on your use of AI provides insights to reviewers on what types of weaknesses, such as hallucinations or incorrect citations, to look for in your documents.
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Principle 3. Think of an AI tool as an extremely talented writer on your team, but one who has significant weaknesses. In your career, you have the opportunity...
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Photo by Chris Spiegl on Unsplash
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Principle 4. Even when faced with writing the same document, different people will use AI in different ways and to different extents. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Principle 5. Recognize the stylistic and grammatical patterns of AI, especially for the documents that you write most often. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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References
- Catherine Berdanier and Michael Alley, "We still need to teach engineers to write in the era of ChatGPT," Journal of Engineering Education, vol 112, issue 3 (July 2023), pp. 583-586.
- Editors of Nature, "Tools such as ChatGPT threaten transparent science; here are our ground rules for their use," editorial, Nature, vol. 613 (26 January 2023), p. 612.
*AI was not used to research, draft, or revise this webpage.