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that for you and write it probably , better than the majority of kids can write it .
When writing isn ’ t thought of just being ticking boxes and doing stuff for assessment that helps you jump over hurdles that is just exactly the kind of thing that machines are already doing now , in the writing world . So humans need to be taught to write differently , and that ’ s why I ’ ve argued that this current sort of NAPLAN writing test , which focuses on just that empty , meaningless product , is just training kids to be robots . We already know robots are doing it better , so it has to go . We have to reconnect with what writing really is .
How can we use artificial intelligence to help teach students how to write better ? I want to make it absolutely clear that I ’ m not saying students shouldn ’ t learn to write anymore . I think learning to write and learning to write well is going to become even more important when humans are doing more of this work . It ’ s sophisticated work of evaluating and editing and working with texts that are produced by AI .
ChatGPT is banned in many Australian schools at the moment and is for people over 18 . So I ’ m not necessarily talking about that language model , but there are loads of language models out there that are freely accessible . Students don ’ t necessarily have to use them . So I ’ m not advocating doing anything that ’ s against policy or that will endanger students in any way or anything like that . Or undermining what the various departments and schools might have decided . But the sorts of things that these text generators could do , can for example , help you with brainstorming . You could put some ideas in and it can come up with some more ideas or evaluate your ideas or elaborate on a particular idea .
What do developments in AI mean for the future of literacy ? Now that is the billion-dollar question . I don ’ t have any definitive answers yet , but I know that , without any doubt , things like ChatGPT are going to get better . As we ’ re all playing with it , it ’ s learning from us , it ’ s taking our data and it ’ s going to become better and better . And so that has implications too . But , coming back to that fundamental question of what writing is for , if writing is deeply tied up with thinking , we don ’ t want to outsource that to a machine that just dumps text in our laps .
It ’ s really important to be writing and to be thinking and doing the kind of thinking that humans do , but machines don ’ t . That ’ s thinking with empathy , thinking with purpose , thinking with an actual real goal to make something in the world better or affect some kind of change . Thinking ethically too , it ’ s really important . I believe that writing will endure . It will continue , there ’ s no doubt about that . ■
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