Over the course of week one, we covered two readings: Cummings “Introduction to Machine Rhetorics” and Ridolfo and DeVoss’ Composing for Recompostion.
Starting with Cummings work, I found that the strongest leading points revolved around how AI is going to continue to grow and impact our lives. In the class, the biggest questions suggested how AI should work within the community.
The biggest standout to me during the reading was the representation of AI being a “co-author”. While I understand the logistics behind it, AI writing partial knowledge that is then used in your work, it is nothing more than a mere tool used for obtaining information and asking questions. It would be comparable the author of the story asking their mentor for help. You do not provide the mentor as a co-author because it is not their story, they are simply just helping the author as a source. The same is for AI. While it can be considered authors of today’s age, in order to allow true authors the ability to write their own creative work, AI must not be allowed to advance in a case that is considered co-author and not tool.
Another major issue that was brought up in class was the idea behind AI being used in schools. Now, yes it is prevalent in advanced schooling like University level and even some secondary education, but for primary, there are major concerns. After debating how AI could be used, a classmate brought the idea of saying “you could use AI to preform a task, and have the students essentially grade the work.” This allows not only the usage of AI, which in many cases can be helpful, but also allows students free will to learning and growing by exploiting the major setbacks that the AI paper has provided.
In the conversation between the second reading by Ridolfo and DeVoss, there wasn’t as much discussion concerning how something may affect us, but rather how writing has changed and shaped overtime. At a quick glance, we determined the five major canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. As time and technology has advanced the idea behind canons has also changed. Some have lost many of their meanings, yet Ridolfo and DeVoss still provide interesting insights on how some of these canons are still used. The biggest one that stood out to me was the talk of Delivery, which was really the major point of the paper so of course it will, but they still provided a strong introduction as to why it it’s important to follow your body language when you speak. Depending on whether you are talking in front of a crowd, or preparing to provide an audio tutorial, delivery is still a major priority in your rhetoric.
As times have passed, we talked about how Style and Arrangement were really the only two that rhetoric now defined amongst general conversation between others. It is easy to lose track of the other major canons, and from my point of view, Ridolfo and DeVoss do a great job at reeling Delivery back into the mix as a true canon.
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2 responses to “Week 2 Reflection”
Your mention of A.I. using partial knowledge that is then used in work reminds me of something. Much of writing relies on sources, allusion, and respect for other authors. A.I. seemingly disregards this. Can an A.I. replicate Steven King’s work, possibly, but could it pay homage to Steven King’s works? That I doubt.
On the topic of Ridolofo and DeVoss’ work, I find that by looking at the way technology has shaped communication, and therefore rhetoric, is super important. When we apply it to current technology, we usually think of A.I., but I would argue that social media is still an important field to consider delivery. They focused mostly on YouTube, but considering TikTok’s effect on delivery: our messages are smaller, we employ a different format, and are expected to be more animated. Not saying this is bad, but more so saying that technology has drastically shaped what we consider important.
I really enjoyed your analogy between AI and a mentor. AI is useful for a paper and it is just a tool, it is not another person that you need to cite and put as a “coauthor”. Your point on having AI write something and getting kids to grade it is especially genius because that leads to interactive learning. I remember being in school and learning better by seeing someone do something, attempting it myself, and communicating throughout the process about what is going on. That process allowed me to fully understand things; I can see students communicating and learning a lot from AI.