This might be a bit rambly, but it can be hard to capture all the thoughts flying through my head.
These are some recent events:
1) I'm working on an AI writing project for my school board.
2) I'm facilitating four AQ courses.
3) I'm scrapbooking the photos I took at school from March - June.
4) I'm paying my daughter for tights she bought on my behalf. (This is a picture of me wearing them, which will end up being the thumbnail photo when I share this blog post online.)
5) I'm having long conversations with my husband as we take walks to maintain our gains from the Lean and Clean challenge.
6) I'm not on as much social media anymore, but on the main platform I frequent, I saw an ad that caught my eye.
This advertisement made me a bit sad. In case you can't read it, it's a picture of a frowning cat, with the captions "Manually creating every piece of content?" and "Oh my sweet, you're better than that." This ad, for Canva, is promoting Canva Pro, which has several AI tools. I had a very "oppositional reading" reaction (to reference Stuart Hall - interesting tangent, by the way ... I couldn't recall Stuart Hall's name. When I Googled "media theorist who coined phrase oppositional reading", the first hit, even before Wikipedia, was my 2023 AML post on Hall's Audience Reception Theory!)
I had a negative reaction to this ad because I felt like it was denigrating the act of building or making something yourself. I know that it's supposed to be about saving time and being efficient, but that wasn't my takeaway.
My opinion is probably influenced by points #4 and #5. I bought those "rubine" hued pantyhose from a company called We Love Colors. It's an American company. My daughter was buying things from them for her cosplay and offered to include me in on the order. As fantastic as the products are, we would have preferred to have supported a Canadian company. However, we did not see any Canadian options. Manufacturing businesses don't seem to operate as much in Canada. Even my beloved Canadian Fluevogs construct the actual shoes in locations around the world, like Portugal, Mexico, Peru, China and Vietnam. On the weekend, I was chatting with my sister, who lives in Calgary. She complained that when she went shopping to purchase a garden hose, the only choices were to buy ones made in the USA or in China. Combine this with my husband's recent allusions to "John Henry", and I have a longing to celebrate what it means for humans to actually make something, even though it may take longer or be more expensive.
Cheaper. Faster. Easier. These are the reasons why we don't have as many companies here building things. I understand. This is even why some people turn to using Generative AI.
However, I feel as if, when we outsource AI to do the fun, creative things, it's a bit backwards.
(There is criticism to this argument related to technical skills vs creative skills. I won't get into it here.)
As a teacher, one of the parts of the job that I enjoy the most involves planning lessons and delivering them to students. (The part I dislike the most is marking, but if you've read this blog before, you already know that.) I appreciate how, as part of my writing contract with my school board, I've been directed to many school board documents and suggestions related to Generative AI / Large Language Models. The organizers must feel that having human writers is worth the money, because otherwise, they could have just as easily used AI to generate the content. Speaking of those guiding documents, a very important paragraph in one of those documents describes some sample appropriate educator uses:
"AI can generate lesson plans, activities, and discussion prompts ... AI can adapt existing content, such as articles or texts, to different reading levels ... AI can help generate creative writing prompts, discussion starters, and even short stories ... It's important to remember that while AI can significantly save time, it is not meant to replace teachers. It can be a powerful assistant, freeing up educators to focus on the more nuanced and human aspects of teaching, such as building relationships with students, fostering critical thinking, and providing individualized support."
Critical thinking gets trickier when more and more content starts to look the same. I'm grateful that CIVIX and AML and CSL are around to offer ways to continue to practice critical thinking. However, I want to draw attention to something Carol Arcus said in my Media Specialist AQ this past spring. I'll have to paraphrase it because I can't find the original source, but she said something about media production is what helps develop critical thinking through and about media. When you are involved in making something yourself, you appreciate it more and see all the decisions that are involved in the creation.
This is why I still love building my physical scrapbooks. It takes hours for me to choose which photos I want to develop, craft the captions that I want to accompany these images, select the font style, size and color, and then experiment with different paper backgrounds and layouts. It's labour-intensive, but the labour is part of the enjoyment.
It's also honourable, which is why I don't use AI for any part of my TL AQs that I manage. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" if the AQ candidates can't use it, then neither shall I. Some people may think that the university policies that prohibit any use of AI for course work is draconian and old-fashioned, but I understand how difficult it is to monitor the use, to determine if the AI just helped tweak the phrasing a bit to make it more succinct or if the AI produced the entire document based on a prompt with minimum thought by the person typing the prompt. We plan on incorporating some AI-related tasks into the York TL AQ courses at a later date, but in a way that is informative and still encourages course participants to think for themselves. This personal restriction on AI in my AQs means that it is taking me FOREVER to mark some of the assignments that require individualized feedback. The only crutch I'll use is a document I made myself of my own sentence starters. So, to any people taking any of the courses I'm involved with, I promise that I am not inputting your responses into an AI tool and generate commentary.
AI isn't the best. AI isn't the worst. Our society needs to sort out how to use AI ethically and responsibly in a way that respects the human creative process. Hopefully we figure this out sooner rather than later.
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