First Day of School (An AI short story)

I produced the following using GPT-3:

It is the first day of school. The students scurry into the classroom. You watch as they sit at their desks. You are there to greet them, but you are not their teacher—not yet. They are there to learn about you as a person.

You tell them a little bit about yourself. You talk about your own school days, when you were a student like them. How much you loved learning, and how you always wanted to be a teacher. You tell them about your favorite subjects. They listen intently.

You share with them the things you liked about school—the opportunity to learn, to explore, to discover. And you talk to them about the things you didn’t like about school—the way the curriculum was presented, the way teachers lectured, the way students were confined to a classroom all day long. 

You tell them that as much as you loved school, you hated it at the same time. There was so much you wanted to learn, but you felt trapped by the ways schools were organized and designed. You hated the way you were forced to conform to certain behaviors and expectations. You hated that you weren't encouraged to show initiative, to ask questions, to be creative, or to follow your own interests. 

And like most kids, you did not know how to reconcile these two feelings. So you compartmentalized them. You separated your love for learning from your hate for schooling. And then you buried your hate, or at least tried to bury it. 

But one day your love for learning could not hold back your hate anymore, and it burst forth like a volcano. You interrupted your teacher with a barrage of questions: Why are we learning this? Why is it important to my life? Why don't we get to study things that interest us? Why do we just sit here and listen to you each day? It was the first time you'd ever been sent out of a classroom in your life, and it scared you. It scared you because you knew you had done something wrong, but did not know why it was wrong. So you did the only thing you could think of: You apologized to the teacher. 

You tell them that now, as an adult, you are lucky enough to be a teacher who can decide how students learn. You tell them that the world has many pressing problems and challenges and it needs their help in solving them. And you tell them you know they have problems, too, and that you are here to listen. 

You tell them stories. You tell them about a group of middle school students who designed an app that helps blind students navigate their school. You tell them about students who built a prosthetic arm for a disabled girl so she can play the cello. You tell them about the students who created a small home for a homeless vet and also the students who are designing and running their own tech businesses. 

You tell them because you know students rise to challenges, especially meaningful ones.

You say that they have access to all sorts of resources you never had as a student. You explain how students can now explore the four corners of the world and create incredible content, can work independently or team up with others anywhere, anytime. students can create just about anything, anywhere, at any time. You point out that the creative learning possibilities are only limited only by their imagination. 

You tell them how they could use technology to speak to people all over the world -- scientists, astronauts, artists, writers, and other students -- to ask them questions and to learn about their lives.

You tell them they could learn how to code and revolutionize the software industry, or they could learn how to be the next great artist or designer.

You tell them they could learn how to create their own interactive and animated stories, poems, and even books.

You tell them how they could use free 3D modeling software to create content for feature films, video games, and animated movies.

You tell them how they could use immersive games to create interactive 3D environments.

You tell them how they could use free software suite to create images, posters, audio, video -- just about anything.

You tell them they could use these tools to follow their passions, and to create whatever they wanted.

You tell them they could team up with other kids in the class and create an entire world of their own, or they could work alone and create something that shows off their hard work.

You tell them they could create just about anything.

Anything at all.

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As I wrote recently in IntrepidEd, “Generative Pre-trained Transformer, Version 3” or GPT-3 is publicly accessible Artificial Intelligence that can write stories, create characters, and craft poetic language that appears convincingly human.

For the story above I used Sudowrite, a publicly-available and subscription-based GPT-3 writing tool. With Sudowrite, a user need only insert a small amount of text and AI can create a new passage of text based on the input. The user can accept Sudowrite-generated text, edit it, or delete it.

Sudowrite is geared towards fiction writers and can provide different ideas for a story to follow. My goal was to leverage Sudowrite to create an inspirational and motivational story with a clear underlying message for educators. (You can tell me whether I achieved my goal.)

I inputed 40 words of text based on an article I wrote years ago on the creative potential of iPads. Here is the text I inputted:

“With iPads, students can create just about anything, anywhere, at any time. The creative learning possibilities for student demonstrations of knowledge and understanding are limited only by the imagination. As HarvardX Research Fellow Justin Reich puts it: “Educators shouldn’t think of iPads as repositories of apps, but rather as portable media creation devices.” Incredible opportunities for active, immersed learning emerge when educators reflect on “how a small suite of apps related to annotation, curation, and image, audio, and video production [can] support diverse student performances of understanding.”

Sudowrite began with an introductory paragraph that restated the ideas, but then it proceeded to create the story you see above.

Granted, I made revisions. I took out references to specific software/platforms that were included in the story. I changed the order of several “You tell them” lines and edited most of them, from lightly to heavily. Most significantly, I added “the barrage of questions” in the story to help convey a particular message. But the gist of the story, and most particulars, was created by AI.

As a writer, I am thrilled that AI is able to generate such an engaging story based on my ideas. It has created a powerful way of spreading a message that goes beyond what I typically produce. It showed me a new approach to conveying an idea. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I am excited to share this story and it’s motivated me to produce more writing.

As an educator, I am concerned that Sudowrite can do so much of the writing for students. Educators may struggle to determine what is written by a student and what is written by GPT-3. Moreover, AI-created writing is original so teachers will not be able to rely on Turnitin or Google searches to locate the source of the text.

But my colleagues immediately realized that the story was not in my usual style of writing. And for those teachers he read student work regularly it will likely be obvious to them when their students are turning to AI.

But, perhaps not.

So, the challenge facing educators is daunting. How will educators harness the creative potential of AI-writing to motivate and inspire student writers? How might GPT-3 be leveraged to encourage student writers that are stuck, frustrated, or lack confidence? At the same time, how will educators limit its potential for abuse and position it as a student writing “partner” and not a replacement?