Week 2-1
I am wondering if you use any AI detection websites to see if any AI was used for an assignment? [...] Even if nobody used AI, the tool would still show a small percentage.
As a student I think AI can be helpful for the use of grammar checks and for the expansion of one's vocabulary.
what students should do instead is use it to get ideas from AI. This can be articles, stories, magazines, & etc. That AI provides to the student based on what they are trying to write about.
I understand the usage of AI as a type of more advanced search engine,
Research conducted by OpenAI found that its latest and most powerful reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, hallucinated 33% and 48% of the time, respectively, when tested by OpenAI's PersonQA benchmark.
Moore-Colyer, 21 June 2025
On one test, the hallucination rates of newer A.I. systems were as high as 79 percent.
Metz and Weise, 6 May 2025
[W]e further conclude that it is impossible to eliminate hallucination in the real world LLMs. [...] We emphasize that since hallucination is inevitable, rigorous study of the safety of LLMs is critical and urgent.
Xu et al., 13 Feb. 2025
Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs.
Hicks et al., "ChatGPT is bullshit," 8 June 2024
My Ideas
We shouldn't be using AI for this class for any purpose. The only possible impact it can have on your writing is contrary to the purposes of this class.
Research is a crucial component of Engl C1000. In support of this, whenever we submit papers involving research, I will ask that we also submit PDFs of our sources (if digital) or pictures (if print). I need to be able to see what you're looking at!
We will use TurnItIn for our project submissions, but TurnItIn's AI estimate will not be used as a standalone indicator of AI usage.
We don't use AI not because it is "cheating," but because AI cannot do the kind of writing that our class is intended to teach. (There's nothing in the rules that says dogs can't play basketball. They just can't.)
The Great Library
Why do we do research?
The Great Library
‽
Your job for the Great Library is to make a decision about a question, problem, or issue that is important to you, and about which you are uncertain.
Guidelines for Topic Selection
Your topic for the Great Library should be:
Some Examples
Some Bad Ideas
These papers almost always turn out badly. Sorry!
Brainstorming
Take out a sheet of paper. Number it 1-20.
When I say go, complete the following sentence as many times as you can:
You have 3 minutes.
I am
_________________.
What you have now is a list of identities, roles, activities, and beliefs that define you.
Go through your list and look for parts of your life where you face questions or uncertainty. What decisions are you trying to make? What issues are you trying to form an opinion on?
Try to build a list of possible topics for the Great Library.
Research Questions
A research question should be:
A research question should be:
a question
It should end in a question mark. A research question is not a statement.
that research can help
If finding facts can't help us answer our question, it's probably not a great question for this project.
you make a decision about
Our questions shouldn't be simple yes or no questions, or questions just about facts. A research question should require us to evaluate the information we find and make a decision about the answer.
Your Research Question will have a huge impact on how successful your paper is.
For next class, draft three possible Research Questions on three different topics.
A research question should be: