The piece below was written by Creative Writing BA(Hons) student Erin Bell as part of their Literature in Practice module. Erin dissects AI’s place and impact on academia and explores the ethical and creative dilemmas it presents.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has swiftly laid its claim on the world and the internet over the past few years and with that has come a widespread concern about its development and what it’s capable of as its integrated into society. Siri and spellcheck are one thing, but generated AI programmes like ChatGPT have been given the spotlight and many wonder what this means for students and academia.
According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, more than half of undergraduates in the UK are using or have used AI to complete their assignments. Over 1,000 students across the country were asked if they had used AI tools such as ChatGPT and 53% of them admitted that they did. The use of this technology in higher education has become somewhat of a grey area for student and teaching bodies alike, with many universities like the University of Brighton starting to voice their stance and policies in the last two years.To dissect this topic properly, I sat down with a few university students and a lecturer to discuss the ways that AI is used in the University of Brighton; how is the university evolving to accommodate such a big change in society as well as educating their students on what they can and can’t do with it?
“I know that in one of my seminars we were told not to use it, but I do know people on my course who use [Chat GPT] to plan their essays.” Minky Cornish, a third-year Sociology student commented. Sophie Yates, a third-year Creative Writing student, had the same sentiment to her peer. Stating there isn’t anything immediately obvious in any of the modules that she’s taken to take her to any information about AI. Although there is information out there about the University of Brighton’s policies on the topic of AI, the author being Dr David Walker; the real query is how that information is distributed to students.
The students and I asked the advice from Beatrice Hitchman, the undergraduate course leader for Creative Writing to see if she could shed light on students’ uncertainty. She stated that in an “ideal world on every module page there would be a statement about […] AI usage and we’ve tried to get that baked into the module guides so that students would know they are able and encouraged to use AI.” However, Bea also explains that “because the situation is changing so rapidly […] almost by the time the policy is written, you would need to do another.”
Another topic that cropped up during this conversation was how AI is impacting the rapidly evolving job market. As third years, both Sophie and Minky expressed their thoughts on future job prospects and how AI may damage chances of future careers. Speaking from a Sociological perspective, Minky doesn’t feel massively worried as the human touch is vital for their future job prospects. They explain that “AI probably couldn’t do things the same way as a human could” referring to professional field studies, as building rapport is an important quality that machines don’t have. Being a Creative Writing student however, Sophie commented that “there’s been many protests and strikes from [film and TV] writers already because of the threat of generative AI has on their jobs” however, because all of this is relatively new, she thinks that “maybe in the future it could become an issue but for now I think, I hope, we’re safe.”
Bea shared her own viewpoint, noting that AI in teaching “has fantastic potential applications that we could do well to think about. In what way can it summarise information usefully? What aspects of the job can be automated?” but also agreeing with Minky and Sophie that some things in the job cannot be automated and may well need the human touch. She also stated that “there is no acid test […] no way that we can say whether or not an assessment has been 100% generated” but she trusts that lecturers always know, believing that AI generated assessments “have this quality of Donald Trumpian magic nothingness; saying many things over and over again but actually very little.” Like the students, Bea feels that AI taking her job isn’t in the immediate future but the chance of it happening is not 0%.
AI is a complicated phenomena and the academic world must keep up with its evolution. Bea says that “I think the thing to do is keep abreast of all the challenges and just evolve in parallel with AI.” There are always answers when it comes to AI and not being afriad to ask them is the most important thing.
Bea’s main advice to students unsure about what and how they can use AI is to contact their module tutors, as these rules may differ module to module.
Author: Erin Belle, Creative Writing BA(Hons) student at the University of Brighton.
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