A big shout out to my friend Peter McAsh for spurring me on with this line of thinking and research. We’ve been going back and forth privately discussing the current phenomenon (as we see it) of discussion about this current bit of Artificial Intelligence.
Neither of us is in a classroom these days but we both agreed that we would be talking to students about this exciting piece of technology and how it has the potential to be the next big thing – if it already isn’t.
Last night, he sent me this Twitter message from Alec Couros
Those that know, know that Alec is on top of so many new technologies that, when something catches his attention, it’s worth the time to see his thoughts on the topic.
This link that he shares takes you to some interesting and well-crafted prompts designed to illicit some deep response
These aren’t silly little one-liners; the content includes a great deal of detail that the software has some direction for its response. It’s worth a click-through to see the details.
There has been discussion about educators facing a world where a prompt like…
“Write me an essay about Confederation”
… might end up with a product that could be submitted for substantial marks.
There has been discussion among Computer Science teachers that it might be used to write code.
I’m still up in the air about this. I’ve checked it out on a personal level to see if it could be used to write a blog post for me! Silly me sitting here thinking of ideas and words when it could do it for me. To date, I haven’t had it generate anything that was good enough to pass off as a copy of something that I might write.
I had to smile when I looked at the detail in the prompts thinking that, if I was going to get that detailed, I might just as well write the post myself. But, you never know.
It was an interesting bit of learning. I’m following the development of this, to be sure.
I’m fascinated to see where it goes. Reading these prompts has provided more insight than some of the short articles that I have been reading.
How about you?
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.