AI Essay Writing

beach photo taken by Beriah Grier

For my weekly class assignment, I was given the instruction to give an AI system a 250-word prompt about a topic that I am familiar with.  I was then to paste two copies of the AI output into a Google Doc, fact-check and edit the second version, and then rewrite the essay in my own words.

My AI tool of use was ChatGPT. I haven’t used this form of Open AI that often, but I find it to be a very simple system to use.  The hardest part for me was coming up with a prompt that I wanted to use for the assignment.  Literally seconds after inputting the various prompts into ChatGPT, it would put out very concise responses. I eventually ended up with the following prompt: “ In 250 words, describe key differences and similarities between Instagram and Youtube.”

I found that ChatGPT was very thorough at putting together a concise list of similarities and differences. I did notice that it wasn’t as up to date on more recent changes that both platforms have gone through (ex. YouTube Shorts). It also tends to restate things using larger vocabulary words that most people would not. You can view my re-edited prompt here.

Reviewing the ChatGPT prompt and rewriting it was a very interesting process. In the past few years, I have heard a lot of buzz on the internet about people plagiarizing by using AI to write their papers and projects.  While it is a useful tool for generic information on a topic, it’s not 100% accurate and doesn’t have the most up-to-date data that would be needed to be researched and correctly cited.