Who Wrote This?
eBook - ePub

Who Wrote This?

How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing

  1. 344 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Who Wrote This?

How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing

About this book

Would you read this book if a computer wrote it? Would you even know? And why would it matter?

Today's eerily impressive artificial intelligence writing tools present us with a crucial challenge: As writers, do we unthinkingly adopt AI's time-saving advantages or do we stop to weigh what we gain and lose when heeding its siren call? To understand how AI is redefining what it means to write and think, linguist and educator Naomi S. Baron leads us on a journey connecting the dots between human literacy and today's technology. From nineteenth-century lessons in composition, to mathematician Alan Turing's work creating a machine for deciphering war-time messages, to contemporary engines like ChatGPT, Baron gives readers a spirited overview of the emergence of both literacy and AI, and a glimpse of their possible future. As the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and fluent, it's tempting to take the easy way out and let AI do the work for us. Baron cautions that such efficiency isn't always in our interest. As AI plies us with suggestions or full-blown text, we risk losing not just our technical skills but the power of writing as a springboard for personal reflection and unique expression.

Funny, informed, and conversational, Who Wrote This? urges us as individuals and as communities to make conscious choices about the extent to which we collaborate with AI. The technology is here to stay. Baron shows us how to work with AI and how to spot where it risks diminishing the valuable cognitive and social benefits of being literate.

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Yes, you can access Who Wrote This? by Naomi S. Baron in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Education Theory & Practice. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Prologue: Human Writers Meet the AI Language Sausage Machine
  7. Part I: Writing Lessons
  8. Part II: What if Machines Could Write?
  9. Part III: When Computers Write
  10. Part IV: When Computers Collaborate
  11. Coda: Why Human Authorship Matters
  12. Main Characters
  13. Acknowledgments
  14. Notes
  15. References
  16. Index