Using Bing Chat AI for an English Writing Class: a Lesson Idea

I was ‘testing’ Bing Chat AI yesterday, trying to see if it could produce a five paragraph murder mystery story in a compelling manner. I’ve got this inspiration after a discussion with a colleague of how ‘scary’ AI could be, of how it could write a story creatively, worthy of publication as a novel. Somehow it got me thinking of what differenciates human from machine. If creativity is the factor that separates us from machines, well, Chat AI is one of the things that may scare us as it can get very creative. In fact, many artists and writers already fear that it may eliminate their jobs, as it can produce art works/writing to the level of quality of experienced artists and writers.

Anyhow, as a teacher, I personally believe that AI is inevitable, and our students are of the digital generation. Instead of making AI as an enemy, I think we need to equip students with the abilities to employ AI to develop their learning skills. Something of a metacognitive approach to learning. It is due to the situation in which our students are located; they are a generation that has AI in almost every aspect of their daily life. Thus, they need to able to use it for their learning benefits.

And thus, back to my little experiment with Bing Chat AI. I specifically use this platform, as it provides not only the product of a prompt, but also references that it used to generate the product. In that way, I can always crosscheck the original source of the product, to see if the product is valid or true or reliable. I had an experience of asking a question to Bing Chat AI and it gave me a false information, but luckily it had a reference to the source and I quickly discovered why it provided me with the false answer. This feature is missing in ChatGPT and without criticality, one can assume that whatever ChatGPT provides, that is the truth (which is dangerous).