ChatGPT is calling. Will you answer?

Think back to the first time you saw the iPhone. What was your reaction? Were you a Blackberry devotee who was repelled by the idea of having a computer in your pocket? “Too much!”  Did you resist a touch screen keyboard? Were you perfectly happy with the way your Blackberry allowed you to answer email - which was the communication of the day. Or maybe you were ready to ditch the old flip phone? Perhaps you were immediately seduced by the sleek design, full access to the internet, and a pretty decent camera. Regardless of how you felt, did you pause to consider what it would mean for the way we communicate, consume media, learn, create, share, shop, sell and move through the world? Did you think about how you could be tracked? Track others? Did you imagine a device that would, in essence, change everything? We didn’t know. We couldn't have imagined. Right? Well, maybe we could have.

Every once in a decade or so we bear witness to a revolutionary technology, and we fail to recognize the implications it has for the future. Last week, we saw the introduction of ChatGPT to the general public, and it is leaving many of us wondering: What will this mean for the future of writing? This AI chatbot - still a prototype - has students in a frenzy and for good reason. Could it be that they might be looking at the last essays they ever have to write from scratch? The Atlantic and The New York Times certainly wonder this as well. This platform allows you to submit a few sentences about what you want to write and then ChatGPT does the web research that enables it to produce a perfectly intelligible - and rather comprehensive output - a letter, an essay, a research paper, or a fictional short story - in about five seconds  What?

Here is what my high school aged child had to say about it last week. You can see my reaction in real time.

I am already showing my own concerns and resistance. I'm worried about how he might use it. My child, on the other hand, is imagining the possibilities for ChatGPT to be helpful.

There it is. That word. . . change. But then I get on the bandwagon.

He's already thinking of all the ways he can use it for good. Even if he can't spell argumentative. . .But does he need to?

At L+D we’ve been having some fun with it. We’ve had it write some school mission statements, a few strategic plans, and emails to our board members and clients. Most of these compositions have been pretty bland, but made for decent starting places. I assigned ChatGPT to compare and contrast West Side Story with Romeo and Juliet and received a pretty strong five paragraph essay. Greg asked the bot to compose a short story for my daughter about the fictional marriage between Taylor Swift and Timothee Chalamet. It wasn’t bad.

It gets better. Once ChatGPT offers a first draft, you can then coach the bot to iterate and improve upon the original “Can you make the language a little more informal?” “Can you add a paragraph about how the new film version of West Side Story compares to the original film?”  “Now tell the story of the breakup of Swift and Chalamet.” Bam! In less than 5 seconds you’ll have a new and improved version. Add to ChatGPT’s skill set - it can give you critical feedback on your original writing and help you to build on your initial thinking.

Haven't explored ChatGPT yet? Stop reading and try it now.    

If you don’t believe this will be transformational, we are going to ask you to think a little more critically and less dismissively and to explore, not confirm, some of your own thoughts and feeling about a new technology in real time. Here is the opportunity to do what we didn’t do when we first saw the iPhone and IMAGINE the possibilities - for writing, for teaching, for learning, for communicating and for . . . fill in the blank. How might this technology be used in your everyday life as an educator, a school leader or a learner? How might your students, like my child, be thinking about using this technology?

Check your own gut reaction to the idea of a bot doing a very human activity - writing and maybe even thinking. (What does even it mean for a machine to think?) Are you finding yourself excited or filled with dread? Are you wondering how this will change what schools need to teach students about writing? Are you simply resisting the idea completely and thinking to yourself, “It won’t change a thing. We will just keep on doing what we have always done.” Or maybe, you are seeing the possibilities for supporting better writing, pushing critical thinking even further and maybe even giving students more feedback on their writing than ever before?  

If you are not sure how to respond, you might try some good old fashioned imagining. Here's a starting place.

1. Get together with a group of colleagues, family or friends, and set an intention to simply play with the ChatGPT for 20 minutes. Have some fun with it. 

2. Take 10 minutes to brainstorm ALL of the possible ways the technology could be used by you and by your students. Don’t judge the ideas, just list them. Be more curious than certain.

3. Take 7 minutes to pick three or four ideas that you are really excited about and consider how you might apply the technology in ways that move you towards the more ideal use.

4. Take 7 minutes to consider three of four ideas that you might be resisting. Ask why you are resisting those ideas. Is the resistance to something ethical or moral or is it resistance to a new way that seems to threaten or undermine an established norm?

5. Take 7 more minutes to discuss how this technology might look different 5-10 years in the future as it evolves and improves, as most technology does.

6. Finally, ask what might we do this week, this month, or this year as a school to steer our community in the preferred direction of using this technology and leverage its capacity for teaching, learning and communicating?

We’ve known for a long time that AI would be a game-changer. Exactly how it will change the game is still to be determined, but you don’t have to be a passive recipient of this future. You can help to shape it. The ability to design a more preferred future is why most futurists are optimists. They see their role in imagining the world before them. So here is your chance. This is an early signal of the future calling you. Will you answer the call?