A case (or Not) for AI

9/24/2025

For this ICRN, you will write a group ICRN. You'll be paired up or in a group of three at random. You'll have some time to discuss and then write. Each group will be assigned one of the three readings that we had for tonight: the scholarly article on prompt creation, the podcast on the use of AI in text production, the corporate deck on using AI to produce content for businesses.

DISCUSS: In your group, discuss the ARGUMENT that your text is making in relationship to AI. I'm not just asking you to identify the thesis (though you should). I'm asking you to identify the underlying beliefs, values, judgements about AI technology and usage that inform the thesis. Is something pro AI? Against? Both? Neutral?

Consider also, the other sides of the rhetorical triangle: Who is/are the author(s)? Who is the Audience? What is the context in which this text is situated? You might also consider Kairos--occasion. You should also probably consider the historical moment that the text you are looking at is situated in. For instance, the Freakonomics podcast came in 2023, when AI was really just making a huge splash. And it was also airing during a writer's strike in Hollywood. That historical moment informs that podcast.

POST: Once you've thought through and discussed these issues in some detail, compose your 300 or longer post as a group that summarizes those discussions. Be ready to come back to class to compare and contrast what you said about your piece versus what other groups said about theirs. As a class, lets discuss how the exercise you participated in with our guest impacted how you felt about the readings--did if change your approach? Your attitude toward? Your understanding of?

3 Comments

Nina and Ashley

9/24/2025 04:16:00 pm

https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/how-to-think-about-a-i/

While you don’t necessarily need to be directly involved with AI, being able to engage with it can help you adapt and succeed in our evolving professional world. Rather than AI ruining jobs altogether, it is only adapting them to fit the technology that is available to us. For example, jobs like prompt creator and proofreader may be more necessary than “writer” or “editor,” but ultimately humans still need to be involved in the AI process; it is not anywhere near self-sufficient yet. We are unsure of whether or not the benefits of machine inventions in the past are comparable to the use of AI because AI’s end goal is to be self-sufficient and on the same level as human intelligence. Being able to speak about the matters you’re writing or editing about is an essential part of the writing process in our opinion, and we are hesitant about whether or not the evolving professional landscape with AI will still make this a possibility. While many experts project AI to be on the same level as human intelligence as late as 2050, if not earlier, we’re hesitant to believe if it will still have any shortcomings—even humans have them.
The Freakanomics podcast also came out in the midst of the 2023 AI boom and the writer’s and actor’s strike, which largely came in part due to the usage of AI in the film and television industry. This podcast’s opinions are probably trying to get people on board with AI, given its continued prominence and real-life implications, and ease its integration into society that we still see nowadays. A lot of the interviewees in these episodes were people entering the space with a lot of first-hand knowledge and experience working with AI tools in various phases of its processes, so naturally they have relatively positive opinions on the power and positive benefits it has to writers and members of society. While there are pushes for regulation in AI in some capacities, a lot of the hesitations came from its implementation in educational settings—professionally, it pushes writers and editors’ careers forward and helps them evolve to the technology and tools available to them.

Glen, Paul, and Isabella

9/24/2025 04:22:12 pm

We found that this article was pro-AI, but the argument itself was more about how, when, and if AI should be integrated as a tool into a company's workflow. They believe that AI is becoming more and more necessary for businesses to use, but emphasize that AI is still a tool that requires human oversight. They also argue that, because of this, it won't take away human jobs. While we were unable to find the specific date of publication, the document itself was copyrighted in 2024, which we sort of thought of as after the AI boom where AI became much more common. We also believe this document was written by a company for other companies. While we initially discussed this argument, our main discussion was about the ethics of AI in a business sense. We all noticed how predatory certain digital business have become, and how these predatory practices have historically targeted vulnerable people. While the article does discuss the ethics of AI in a business sense, we felt it was pretty generic, and, because most companies have a "profit over all" mentality, that these practices will only be exacerbated by AI.

Anna Dykhoff

9/28/2025 12:15:17 pm

“The Metacognitive Demands and Opportunities of Generative AI” was generally framed as a how-to guide fueled by research and practical application. It addressed how to use AI in a way that aligns with human psychology and abilities, paired with the abilities of AI, in order to avoid errors and misinformation as well as improve workflow. The article used a neutral tone towards AI, recognizing its uses and impacts on patterns of thinking, as well as instructions on how to best use and possibly improve the existing technology. The authors suggest taking a metacognitive approach to using AI. Metacognition is the idea of thinking about thinking, and this article put it into the context of thinking about how the AI will think as you use prompts and questions. The authors mention that in learning about AI, we are learning more about the way we think and how much we actually apply metacognition to our own thought processes. The article also addresses whether you should take AI into consideration in your workplace and which areas to apply it to.
The audience for this piece seems to be people who are familiar with AI but not quite sure where to apply it and where it is acceptable to use it. The article outlines common user challenges when engaging with AI and how to solve them by thinking about human patterns of thinking with context and human knowledge, versus the patterns of recognition and knowledge identification implemented by AI. It also showed how much human input and actual thinking matters for using AI effectively as the outputs are only as reliable as the prompts. It was interesting as well that the article actually made suggestions for models of AI to better place metacognitive thinking into responses. A quote that stuck with us while discussing this article was “The design of intuitive interfaces for GenAI systems might therefore inadvertently give users a misleading sense of competence, increasing the risk of errors” (13). We felt as though this quote was an interesting approach to finding the errors that occur commonly when using AI with an experienced, professional approach versus a novice view of AI.

A case (or Not) for AI

Leave a Reply.

Torda and the 489s

Archives

Categories