Snapshots from Before the Revolution: Gauging a Writing Center’s Climate Prior to Adopting Artificial Intelligence Policies

Snapshots from Before the Revolution: Gauging a Writing Center’s Climate Prior to Adopting Artificial Intelligence Policies

Felipe Pruneda Sentíes,
Owen K. Edgington,
Eden E. Robbins,
Sable S. Robinson
Katherine L. Scalzo
The Writing Center, Hendrix College

The Talking Picture Book

If I invoke some clichés about mixed emotions at the arrival of generative AI, it is because they feel true. They also feel appropriate because I believe writing and writing assistance are about mixed emotions. I believe that, to find ways to express thoughts, writers and their readers need to embrace being a bit unsettled. I try to cultivate comfort with uncertainty as a necessary mindset for successful, truly exploratory writing. After advocating for such a double consciousness for years, I feel generative AI is the biggest challenge so far to practice what I preach. Looking at the pictures we put together for this piece, I find great serenity— a reminder of how we reacted when we first realized how quickly a full-fledged essay could appear on an app’s screen. 

(Note: the numbers next to each video thumbnail indicate where readers can find the transcripts for the voice narrations in the Appendix).