AI and I: Tim Battles LLMs in This Current Hellscape

I Don't Care About AI and You Can't M... AI Tells Composition Students What It...

AI and I: Tim Battles LLMs in This Current Hellscape

TheFall semester at my college (www.sinclair.edu)begins in a couple of weeks. It will mark the start of my twenty-sixth yearteaching composition and creative writing there, and my thirty-sixth year ofteaching overall. Teachers everywhere are contending with how best to deal withAI in their classes, and if you’re among them – or just interested in how I doit – here are some of the strategies and tactics I use in the ongoing struggle withlarge language models.

FirstThings First

• Asgenerative AI currently stands it:

• Wastrained on stolen texts (including thirty of my novels).

• Usesan immense amount of energy to power it.

• Usesan immense amount of water (for cooling its servers).

• Isoften inaccurate, sometimes wildly so.

• Canhallucinate.

• Thereis no way to use AI ethically as it currently stands.

• Butthen again, there’s no way to use most of our tech ethically.

• AIis becoming embedded in all our tech, whether we like it or not, or are evenaware of it. It’s becoming almost impossible NOT to use it somehow.

• Theworld currently has a Gold Rush mentality toward AI.

• Ourstudents are advised, encouraged, and demanded to use AI by the world aroundthem.

CurrentConditions

• Morestudents are using generative AI to write essays for them than ever.

• AI-detectionprograms mostly suck. They often give false positives, but even so, they’re thebest tool teachers have to identify AI use in writing.

• Acertain percentage of students have and will likely always cheat. I’ve taughtfor 35 years. Students used to turn in a friend’s essay with their name on itor pay someone to write an essay for them. Personal computers made it easierfor students to share essays. Then they downloaded essays from the Internet.Now they use generative AI to compose their essays.

• Theproblem with generative AI is that the current generation of students doeseverything via technology, and AI is so easy to use, so it’s a lot more temptingto cheat.

• Sure,it’s possible that in the future humans will not write anymore, at least notthe same way we know writing. Who cares? We live and teach now.

TheRealist’s View of Students Using AI in Writing Courses

• Acertain percentage of students will always cheat.

• It’simpossible to prevent all students from cheating.

• Teachersmay think they can identify an AI-written paper on their own, but studies haveshown they mostly can’t.

• Someteachers are returning to having students write on paper in class without usingtech of ANY kind. But this negates decades of research showing that the processapproach to teaching writing works best, and using word processing programs towrite encourages more process-oriented work from students.

EducationalConsiderations

• Thepurpose of an education is to prepare students to live and work in the currentday and the future, using the best practices in their field in the most ethicalways possible.

• Teachers:Who’s your class primarily focused on? You or the students?

• Ifyou’re primarily choosing to police AI use, are you doing it for your students’benefit or yours?

• Byhaving students write on paper in class, you may teach them basic skills ofcomposition, but you will teach them nothing about making ethical choices whenusing AI, which they will have to do in other classes and in the workplace,especially as AI becomes embedded in so many other types of technology.

• Youteach students one ethical stance – doing their own work – but not WHY it’simportant to do their own work. You create only a requirement to fulfill, ahoop to jump through, a rule to follow because a teacher says they must. Thisis, in its own way, as mechanical an approach to teaching as students using AIto write their essays.

Reckoningwith AI

• Myapproach to teaching is a student-centered one, not a subject-focused one. I’mteaching human beings, not a subject.

• Everythingabout writing comes down to thinking, creating, and most of all – makingchoices. This idea, not that idea. This idea first, that idea second. Thisword, not that word.

• Whenwe force students to adhere too strictly to rules, we take away (or at leastseriously hinder) their opportunity to think, create, and CHOOSE.

• AIis an opportunity to reinforce the role of a student’s agency and choice. Theycan choose to use AI or not. They can use AI in a limited way, such as tosuggest a topic or to check grammar and spelling (the same way word-processingprograms have for decades). They can choose to use AI to aid but not replaciethem in the writing process.

• AIis a tool. A knife is a tool as well. You can use it for its intended purposeor you can harm someone with it. But stabbing someone has immediateconsequences most people would rather avoid. Using AI has no immediateconsequences, and there’s a good chance students won’t get caught. Thus, it’sharder to get them to use AI in the “proper” way (as in there’s a proper way touse a knife and many improper – and sometimes destructive – ways).

• Soteachers must CONVINCE students.

• Wemust teach them why writing is important, why writing their own work isimportant, what it can do for them, and what it can do for their readers. We mustteach them what makes good writing and why good writing is important. We mustteach them to value their thoughts and ideas and show them the rewards forsharing those thoughts and ideas in written form.

• Inmany ways, what teachers need to do is treat writing like a religion, wherethere’s a moral reason for students to do their own work, and they shouldresist the seduction of the “evil” side of AI.

• Thisis how higher education used to be before it became expensive job trainingprograms. It’s the humanities-based approach to teaching and learning.

• ButI’m also a pragmatic teacher, so…

What IDo Now and What I Intend to Do Going Forward

• Idiscuss the pros and cons, including the ethical considerations, of AI-assistedwriting with my students early in the course.

• Itell them I only use it so I can understand it enough to talk to them about it.My writing is “handmade” solely by me and always will be.

• Butif there were absolutely no ethical issues with AI use, I’d use it to creatememos, business letters, a syllabus, and then tweak them as necessary. Simple,repetitive, grunt work writing.

• Butbecause I’m a practiced, experienced writer, I know how to guide the shaping ofa document and what tweaks need to be made.

• IfI wasn’t such a writer, using generative AI would be like asking a computer towrite an essay in a language I don’t understand, and when it’s finished, Ican’t read it to tell if it says what I want, if it’s accurate, if it will dothe job I need it to do, etc.

• Iask a generative AI program to tell my students what it can do for them withoutdoing the work for them. Then I ask it to tell my students what it can’tdo for them. This way, I’m not telling them these things. AI is. I post thesedocuments on our course page and discuss them with the class early in thesemester.

• Inthe future, I need to also ask AI what the ethical issues are in its use andhow students can make the most ethical choices when using it. (I haven’t donethis yet, so I don’t know if AI will say anything useful.)

• Ihaven’t done AI-assisted writing exercises in class because I believe AI is unethicalto use, so I want to minimize its use in my teaching as much as possible.

• Butif making ethical-as-possible AI use normal in the class means more studentsmight use it that way, maybe I should reconsider doing AI-assisted writingexercises. (But I’d have a really hard time doing this.)

FinalThoughts

• AIisn’t going anywhere.

• Peopleare going to use it for writing, and it’s decent enough at scutwork writing.This is what most of my students will use it for in the future because it’swhat their jobs will demand.

• AImay one day replace humans, but cockroaches may replace us, too, so who cares?I’m teaching in the present, and right now, AI is like a preschool toy when itcomes to writing – simple functions with pretty lights and amusing sounds. Studentsstill need to learn how to write on their own.

• Teachingis hard and frustrating, and it’s always been that way. Teachers don’tunderstand why others don’t love learning as much as they do, which is maybethe most frustrating thing of all for them. Accept you will never convinceevery student why letting AI do work for them and (in their eyes) make theirlives easier is a bad thing.

• Ilearned long ago that convincing students that their thoughts and ideas arevaluable and that they can learn to express them effectively is the mostimportant thing I can do as a teacher. Because when students believe this, theyWANT to write. People want to feel valued and appreciated. And when thishappens in a writing class, students’ work starts to become better immediately –because they care about it. They put more time and effort into theirwriting because it starts to matter to them. It’s why students need more agencyin selecting topics and their approach to them.

• It’sall about meaning, not about merely programming students like machines.If we treat them like that, why shouldn’t they rely on machines to do theirwriting? But if we can treat people like people – remind them that they arehuman and they are valued, even if we can do so only a few times and in smallways in a semester – then I think we stand a good chance against the machines.

• Asa teacher, I give students what I can, and it’s up to them how much they takefrom the course and apply in the future. I know some will cheat and get awaywith it. I accept this and keep going, just as doctors know when they tell patientsto stop smoking, they may never stop or only stop for a while, then return tosmoking. I cannot be responsible for the choices other people make.

• Butby not dealing with the thorny ethical issues of AI use in class, I would not becreating the conditions for students to be able to make the best choicespossible. So I must deal with it, whether I like it or not.

• Iam so glad I’m only a few years away from retirement!!!!

• NOTE:This is a blog entry to share my thoughts. It’s not a scholarly essay, so don’tcome at me in the comments asking “Source?” for some of the points I make. You’rean adult. You know how to use Google. Google is your friend. Google gets lonelywhen you don’t visit. Go see Google.

DEPARTMENTOF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

TheWorld Turns Red

My newhorror novella, The World Turns Red, came out in June, and reactionsfrom reviewers and readers alike have been overwhelmingly positive! Here’s asample:

“A dark,disturbing masterpiece worth binge-reading in one sitting.” – S.E. Howard

“This isa very dark, intense read with a surreal quality that pulled me in from pageone and held me spellbound to the bitter end.” – Well Worth a Read

TheWorld Turns Red isanother in a long line of brilliant horror work by Tim Waggoner. There wasnever anyone who could blend the real with the surreal so seamlessly that, aswild as the story gets, it makes perfect sense somehow. Now THAT takes one hellof a writer. The book is a flawless masterpiece…6 out of 5 stars. – Carson Buckingham

Synopsis:

Welcometo the meat room.

At first,it’s a whisper on the edge of your consciousness.

As itgets louder, you begin to make out words—dark, sharp, dangerous words… You clapyour hands over your ears to shut them out, but you can’t escape what comesfrom inside you.

The voicetells you to do things to yourself. Bad things. Awful things…

Thelonger you listen, the more they seem reasonable. Desirable.

Inevitable.

And asyou reach for the nearest knife, gun, or rope, the voice speaks the last fourwords you’ll ever hear:

Allhail the Unhigh.

CemeteryDance: https://www.cemeterydance.com/TheWorldTurnsRed

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/5cabrjn2

Barnesand Noble: https://tinyurl.com/kzphuep7

DarkTides 21: 24 Frames Per Second

I’mthrilled to have another new novella in the latest volume of Crystal LakePublishing’s Dark Tide Series – 24 Frames Per Second – alongside AndrewNaldony and Gary A. Braunbeck.

Step intothe terrifying world of Hollywood horror, where the line between fiction andreality blurs, and the consequences of cinematic creation become all too real.In 24 Frames Per Second, three chilling novellas bring to life thedarkest corners of the movie industry—where horror isn’t just confined to thescreen.

“The LastCannibal Movie” by Tim Waggoner: A group of student filmmakers embark on aproject to create a cannibal holocaust film—but soon, their fictional nightmarebegins to unfold in real life. As their imagined horrors come to life, theymust face the terrifying reality of their own creation.

“I Am theRainbringer” by Andrew Nadolny: A woman is transformed into a serial killer byher father’s dying wish, and her husband turns her deadly past into a movie.But the ghosts of his parents—and her brutal history—soon rise to haunt themboth, blurring the line between the living and the dead in a nightmare thatcan’t be escaped.

“This IsNot My Movie” by Gary A. Braunbeck: After a movie theater is consumed by fire,the charred ruins become a nexus for ghosts and alternate realities. A hauntingtale of how a beloved movie theater's destruction births a dark, sentientforce, trapping the souls of those killed in the blaze.

In 24Frames Per Second, horror reaches beyond the screen and becomes part of thefabric of reality, where the true cost of creation is more horrifying than anyfictional tale. Each novella is a unique exploration of terror, art, and theboundaries of reality, set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s darkest secrets.

CrystalLake Publishing: https://www.crystallakepub.com/product/24-frames-per-second-dark-tide-book-21/

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/8u7jh8f

Barnes& Noble: https://tinyurl.com/873tj3vj

Conan:Spawn of the Serpent God

The timeis drawing nigh! My Conan the Barbarian novel, Spawn of the Serpent God,will be released October 28th! The novel ties into the comic book event Scourgeof the Serpent Men (Conan being said scourge, of course, although it lookslike King Kull may be involved, too). You won’t have to read the comics to understandmy book, and vice versa, but if you’re a Conan fan, you might enjoy readingboth. Here’s a link to the first issue of Scourge of the Serpent Men: https://titan-comics.com/c/2316-conan-the-barbarian-scourge-of-the-serpent/

You canfind various preorder links for the novel at the Titan Books site: https://titanbooks.com/72365-conan-spawn-of-the-serpent-god/

And whileI’ve had no official word (because nobody ever tells writers anything), itlooks like Spawn of the Serpent God will be getting an audio edition!I’m super excited because the narrator is Bradford Hastings, who’s not only anexcellent reader and performer, but his Conan is my absolute favorite portrayalof the character. The audiobook is due out in late December, and you canpreorder it at B&N and Amazon. I’m sure it’ll be available directly from BlackstoneAudio (who’s the publisher of the audio version) as well.

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/bn6hh2m

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conan-tim-waggoner/1148011208?ean=9798228671591

Synopsis:

InZamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. Sheentices him to join

her on aheist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain thegoddess herself.

Afterkilling a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestessesof Mitra. But

Conanknows that nothing is free.

Thepriestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god ofchaos and

serpents,who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his

followers.Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing

unspeakableexperiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a

legendarywarrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.