Panel #9 Session 3

 

 

We need to talk about artificial intelligence: Conversations about the future of writing and writing studies

   - Beck Wise, Ariella Van Luyn, Susan Thomas, Lisa Emerson, Bronwyn Dyson & Collin Bjork.

     University of Queensland, University of New England, University of Sydney & Massey University.

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This 1.5-hour facilitated dialogue seeks to understand the unique contribution that writing scholars can make in navigating the challenges created by the public availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI poses both threats and opportunities for creative and professional writers and writing scholars, including multilingual scholars. As the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike demonstrates, the use of AI further entrenches unjust labour conditions in the creative and other industries. AI also poses threats to integrity of writing in a higher education context. Simultaneously, writers across a variety of workplaces and creative contexts are generating content using various AI technologies, including machine translation. Writing scholars, who have long understood writing as collaborative and framed their contribution to knowledge as an investigation of writing process, can contribute much to understanding the impact of AI on writing practices, ethics and authorship.

Adopting a dialogical approach, this panel will begin with short reflections from the facilitators with expertise in sub-disciplines of writing: professional, academic, creative and technical. Through the lens of writing scholarship, this chorus of critical voices illuminates the important questions posed by, and possible responses to, AI in higher education. These short reflections will act as prompts for further dialogue from the audience, centred around the following questions:

• What ideas, practices, changes and controversies relating to generative AI and writing have you observed in your local context?

• What ethical, pedagogical and practical issues emerge from the use/misuse/abuse of AI writing tools in your setting?

• How do you anticipate these settings will be reshaped as writing technologies continue to change?

• What roles and responsibilities do writing, writing studies and rhetoric scholars have in understanding, interpreting? and responding to such changes?

Beck Wise is Lecturer in Professional Writing at the University of Queensland and former Assistant Director of the Digital Writing & Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, with research expertise in technical and academic writing, rhetoric of science, and writing in digital environments.

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Ariella van Luyn is a Senior Lecturer in creative writing at the University of New England, specialising in historical fiction, creative writing pedagogy, and practice-led research methodology.

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Susan Thomas is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include cognitive and transactional rhetorics, feminist and global rhetorics, Indigenous rhetorics, performative writing, writing across the curriculum, and writing centres.
 

Lisa Emerson, Professor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Massey University, is Director of Teaching and Learning in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research interests include information literacy, science writing, and writing in the disciplines.

 

Bronwen Dyson, also from the University of Sydney, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Communication and Media, with an interdisciplinary approach to the English language by adopting the perspectives of Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics and Academic Literacy.

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Collin Bjork is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication, Massey University (NZ). He is trained in rhetoric, writing, and communication, with special interests in podcasting, digital rhetoric, and online writing instruction.