Humans, Animals, and AI-liens

Submitter: Francesca Caparas, De Anza College

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The experiment:

In Spring quarter 2023, I taught a course on Literature and Composition that focused on the relationship between humans and non-human animals in literature. For our unit on Folklore, I gave students the option to write a more traditional literary analysis of a folktale we read for class, or they could do the following:

“Ask ChatGPT (or some other generative AI) to write you a story from the point of view of an alien landing on Earth and being appalled at the way humans treat animals. Keep asking the AI to refine the story until you are satisfied with it. Then write an essay (minimum 3 pages) analyzing why you think the AI made the choices that it made. Things to consider in your essay include:

Take into account the various ways you structured your prompts in order to get the story you wanted. Why did the prompts you entered produce certain results?

What might this writing process mean for the future of literature?

If we, as humans, have created an intelligent machine, what does this mean for our status as animals?”

Gen AI was used for developing the folktale, but the final written product was the students’ reflection on the process. In addition to the written reflection, they also had to submit screenshots of their prompts. The goal was for them to engage in prompt engineering, reflect on it as a writing process, and analyze the larger implications for the future of human writing.

Results:

I was quite pleased with the outcome of this experiment. Since the generative AI activity was optional, the students who chose this option were more enthusiastic and curious about the tool.

As the teacher, I noticed that when grading the assignments, I was more eager to read the essays that reflected on the genAI activity. These essays provided fresh insights into the practice and creativity of writing. I was blown away by the students’ varied approaches to the writing activity and the different meanings they took from the experience. One student noted that it seemed like ChatGPT was just doing the bare minimum to address the prompt, thus missing out on the sense of imagination one would hope for in a folktale. Another student, who also noted the banality of the genAI output, eventually pivoted toward more unconventional prompts such as “write dialogue that consists solely of Arnold Schwarzenegger movie quotes.” This student reflected: “experimenting with ChatGPT allowed me to construct a narrative direction I was personally invested in.”

Overall, students seemed genuinely engaged in this activity, and I was also engaged in reading their reflections. In the future, I would like to see how an assignment like this would fare outside of a literature class. In that case, I will have to adjust the starting prompt so it relates to a wider range of course topics, not just humans, animals, and aliens.