ai is increasingly impossible to avoid. In Google's latest attempt to catch up to OpenAI and Microsoft, the tech giant launched ai-generated summaries of Google search terms.
Meanwhile, it seems like almost every edtech company is adding the letters “A” and “I” to the end of their name, and I recently joked about changing my name to ErikOfgangAI.
But with all the platforms available and all the hype, I only use a few ai tools in my daily work as a writer and educator. Here are the tools and why I find them so valuable.
This ai-powered spelling and grammar checker can integrate with your browser to automatically check your writing. Even its free version is more effective than most other spell checking tools I've used.
I find that, like a helmet or a seat belt, I've gotten so used to using Grammarly that I feel real anxiety when I stop. I also encourage students to use it and find that doing so can decrease errors on a paper by at least 20 to 40 percent, improving their writing and grades.
Grammarly also has an ai-powered generative writing tutor where you can send 100 prompts for free. I've experimented a lot less with this, but from my minimal testing it appears to be, like most generative ai tools I've come across, more flash than function. When I asked him to improve the previous paragraph, he made changes that made writing sounds more mechanical and ai-generated. For example, he changed the sentence: “I think that, like the helmet or the seat belt, I have become so accustomed to wearing them that when I stop I feel real anxiety” to “Personally, I have become so accustomed to wearing them.” “It has become as essential to me as a helmet or a seat belt, and I feel genuine anxiety when I have to stop wearing it.”
The first sentence, while not exactly Shakespeare, at least sounds like me, while the second sounds like a robot imitating an English butler from an old TCM movie.
Otter.ai is a transcription tool that allows you to record meetings and interviews. It then provides an automatic ai-generated summary of these sessions and text that you can search to find the parts of a conference, meeting or interview you want to revisit.
As a journalist, this has saved me almost immeasurable time transcribing interviews. I can't believe that as recently as 2020, I used to transcribe my interviews myself like a fucking medieval monk!
Otter.ai. It can also be useful for taking notes in meetings, and I recommend it to students recording lectures, conducting interviews, and even searching for quotes from podcasts; It can also make that process much easier.
3.GPS
This technology is so widespread that including it here almost seems silly, but yes, without the help of the GPS app on my ai-powered phone, I wouldn't even make it to half of my classes because I would be lost.
Few students will remember the dark days of yore, when arriving at a new location meant going to MapQuest, printing out the directions, and bravely venturing into the unknown knowing that if you strayed from the designated path you would never find your way. Or the time before, when you had to use something called a “map”.
But seriously, talking about the use of GPS can be a good exercise in examining both the strengths and weaknesses of ai. GPS tools can help you avoid traffic and get almost anywhere; However, they can often be wrong. When used in areas you know, the recommended routes can seem illogical and cause more turns and confusion than necessary. The same goes for all the ai tools I've used: they're great, until they're not.
<h2 id="4-ai-search-summaries”>4. ai Search Summaries
Microsoft's Copilot, powered by GPT, has been providing search summaries for a while now, and Google recently launched its own version of an ai search assistant, the aforementioned Google overview feature now appearing in select searches.
I don't like that Google turns this on automatically and have shared my concerns. technology/google-ai-overview-search.html” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/google-ai-overview-search.html” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>about the precision of these tools. As someone who confidently gives you backseat driving advice, an ai summary of your search can be hard to ignore even when you want to.
That said, so much of the modern internet has become a joyless scavenger hunt for random facts that I'm glad when ai can speed that up. I'm probably in the minority here, but so far I like Google's controversial ai roundup. I find it faster and smoother than Microsoft Bing's copilot feature.
I also find that this feature makes it quite easy to trace the source of information used in the summary, making it a wonderful tool for teaching fact-checking. It's not always obvious to students that if an ai says something, it may not be true, so critically examining Google's ai summaries could be a good lesson in tracing sources back to their core. This skill is valuable for students when working with ai, but also other sources of questionable accuracy.
Plus, by teaching your students critical reading and fact-checking, they'll never be tempted to make pizza with glue or eat rock day. ai-is-losing-touch-with-reality-230953″ target=”_blank” data-url=”https://theconversation.com/eat-a-rock-a-day-put-glue-on-your-pizza-how-googles-ai-is-losing-touch-with-reality-230953″ referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>as Google ai summary He has reportedly advised users. (Hopefully!) They'll also learn a valuable skill for a world increasingly populated by questionable sources, both human and ai-generated.
