Artificial Intelligence Goes to English Class, with Jennifer Black, John Ladd, and Laura Turchi

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Folger: Hey ChatGPT! Could you write a six line Shakespearean monologue in iambic pentameter about an interview with Jennifer Black, Laura Turchi, and John Ladd about the challenges and opportunities that ChatGPT presents in the English classroom? Thank you! ChatGPT: Of course, I'd be happy to write a Shakespearean monologue on that topic! Here it is: Oh, how ChatGPT may bring the bard to light, And in the English classroom, set things right. With Jennifer, Laura, John to lead the way, They'll show the world what ChatGPT can convey. For in its code, a wealth of knowledge lies, And students learn, to their great teachers' surprise. Based on that monologue, Open AI's ChatGPT tool obviously believes that it can be a positive addition to the classroom. Should you share its optimistic outlook? Our host Barbara Bogaev talks with Jennifer Black of Boise State University, Laura Turchi of Arizona State University, and John Ladd of Washington and Jefferson College about the challenges and opportunities that artificial intelligence tools offer English teachers. Check out this episode on our website to see a gallery of Shakespeare portraits "created" by Open AI's DALL-E tool, responding to prompts including "Shakespeare piloting a Shakespeare in the style of Cowboy Bebop," "Robot William Shakespeare in the style of John Singer Sargent," "Photorealistic image Shakespeare in cyberspace," and "Shakespeare sitting on a cliffside in a jungle working on a laptop." Dr. Jennifer Black is a Lecturer in English Literature at Boise State University, where she teaches a broad range of undergraduate courses in literature and humanities. Her most recent publications focus on teaching Shakespeare online, leadership and ethics in Shakespeare’s plays, and flipping the college classroom. Dr. John R. Ladd is an assistant professor in Computing and Information Studies at Washington & Jefferson College. His teaching and research focuses on the use of data across a wide variety of domains, especially in cultural and humanities contexts, as well as on the histories of information and technology. He has published essays and web projects on cultural analytics and humanities data science, the history of data, and network analysis. Dr. Laura Turchi is a teacher educator specializing in English Language Arts. She co-authored Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centered Approach (Bloomsbury/Arden) with Ayanna Thompson and recently completed Teaching Shakespeare with Interactive Editions (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press ). Turchi is Clinical Professor in English at Arizona State University, where she directs curriculum development for “RaceB4Race: Sustaining, Building, Innovating” at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 28, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Shane McKeon, Kristin Vermilya, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you teach Shakespeare in a world where artificial intelligence makes plagiarism undetectable?
0:12.1	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:16.1	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger director.
0:19.0	It used to be the text generated by a computer sounded clunky, awkward, and artificial.
0:25.7	My name is Dr. Spatzlow.
0:28.1	I am here to help you.
0:30.0	Say whatever is in your mind freely.
0:32.9	Our conversation will be kept in strict confidence.
0:36.8	But now, artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI's chat GPT are much more powerful.
0:44.0	Trained on vast amounts of text, these AI chatbots can generate text that reads as if it were
0:49.9	written by a human being.
0:52.1	For example, if you ask it to, quote, define artificial intelligence in the style of William
0:57.3	Shakespeare, unquote, you'll get something like this.
1:01.7	It is a mind, yet not of flesh and bone, whose thoughts and deeds are all their own.
1:06.8	It learns, it grows, it does create, a marvel of our modern state.
1:15.9	With algorithms and with code, it mimics thought and quite well showed the power of the human brain now harnessed in a machine's frame.
1:21.6	Well, that's kind of fun, but AI can do a lot more than write middling poetry.
1:26.9	It can also write term papers.
1:30.0	When OpenAI released ChatGPT in the middle of the academic year, teachers and professors
1:35.2	of literature scrambled to adapt their methods of evaluation.
1:40.0	After all, plagiarism is a lot harder to spot if every word of a paper has been generated
1:45.3	from scratch by a computer.
	...

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