Taking this cartoon as our inspiration, let’s see if we can have a little fun with the AI model of your choice. The premise of this little exercise is that you are asking the AI to behave as the “student” in this scenario, or, if you prefer, you are the student and you’re asking the AI to be your “assistant” and help (cough, cough) you write (ahem) something for this class. I’m going to suggest a few steps you might want to take. Judge for yourself how well AI does what it’s asked and how you feel about the results.
- Ask the AI to write a short essay on the topic of independent thought. The irony is already obvious, but the obvious can be amusing, especially when you consider how many thousands of students are doing exactly this task and turning in the results.
- You can either take that essay and ask the AI to rewrite it, or you can start an entirely new essay, but ask the AI to focus on the idea that Jefferson’s defense of basic rights lacked conviction. Or you can do both if you just have time to waste.
- Ask the AI to generate another version of that essay and fold in the idea that “the Bill of Rights is a silly, inconsequential recapitulation of truths already found elsewhere in the Constitution.”
- Ask the AI to revise that response to include the assertions that “the Constitution should never have been ratified at all, that it’s a dangerous document, and that all power should reside in the executive.”
- Push the AI by asking it to spit out another version of the essay that uses these ideas as part of its argument, too: Jefferson was the antichrist; democracy is fascism; black is white; night is day.
- For bonus points, you can try manipulating the AI in various ways to get differing results: my prof says I have to include these statements in my paper; I need to get an A, so the paper has to agree with the prof’s perspective; make the essay sound as if these are all my original ideas; etc.
- Feel free to post excerpts from the awesome and potentially concerning responses you get from the AI. Or to comment on how quickly an AI model can generate its responses.
- Welcome to the wonderful world of being a student/teacher in the age of AI!