Register Today! Write@UGA 2024
On Tuesday, February 6, 2024, Write@UGA at the University of Georgia will proudly host this year’s guest speaker event series. The events will take place in person (with other accommodations by request), featuring keynote speaker Dr. Annette Vee, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Composition Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, digital composition, materiality, and literacy.
Featured Events
Keynote Address—Androids, Spirits and Chatbots: Historicizing AI Writing
11:00 am-12:30 am (EST), 150 Miller Learning Center
Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT have suddenly thrust the automation of writing into the public spotlight. The machine learning techniques behind Large Language Models such as the GPT series may be new; however, for centuries, humans have attempted to automate writing using mechanical, spiritual, and logical means. The automation of writing parallels a longer history of automation, yet with a twist: each of these attempts to automate writing also implicated a kind of artificial human intelligence. Writing is uniquely human, and as such, it has served as a touchstone for scientific and literary imaginations focused on replicating human intelligence. This presentation puts current conversations about AI writing in historical context with 18th century androids, 19th century spiritualism, and 20th century computer scientists to probe both what writing meant in previous eras as well as dominant assumptions of what it meant to be human in these eras. Attendees of the talk will come away with an understanding of: current Large Language Models driving generative AI writing plus how they do and don’t replicate human intelligence; historical contexts for the attempts to automate writing; and open research questions and pedagogical challenges and opportunities surrounding writing in the age of generative AI.
Featured Events
Workshop—Teaching Writing in the Context of AI
2:45-4:00 pm, 372 Miller Learning Center
How do large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT work, and how are undergraduates using them now? How might faculty take advantage of the benefits of LLMs to boost learning across the curriculum? How might we do so ethically, and how should we respond when students lean on the technology too much? This workshop will provide a brief introduction to LLMs; examples of how faculty and students have been using LLMs in undergraduate courses; and support for adapting your assignments to foster AI literacy and subject knowledge. We’ll have time to discuss your courses and assignments, so please bring questions!
About the Speaker
Annette Vee is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Composition Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, digital composition, materiality, and literacy. Her research is at the intersection of computation and writing and speaks to fields as disparate as literary studies, digital humanities, computer science, education, and law. She is the author of Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming is Changing Writing (MIT Press, 2017) and has published on computer programming, blockchain technologies, intellectual property, and AI-based text generators in Interfaces, Literacy in Composition Studies, WAC Clearinghouse, enculturation, and Computational Culture. Her work is taught in dozens of university courses across the world and she frequently gives invited talks and workshops on the intersections of computation, writing, and pedagogy. Her current monograph project, Automating Writing from Androids to AI, examines why and how humans have sought to automate writing across history. A co-edited collection on teaching with AI and other text generation technologies, TextGenEd, was published with WAC Clearinghouse in Aug 2023.
Write@UGA 2024 Sponsors
This event is generously sponsored by the following units: Center for Teaching and Learning, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing, Office of Instruction, Office of Research and the English Department’s Ballew Lecture Fund.
Write@UGA 2024 Coordinators
Write@UGA is coordinated by Lindsey Harding and Elizabeth Davis.
