Lance Cummings

This newsletter has moved to iSophist on Substack.

In Spring 2023, I'll be exploring the creative side of Ai writing technologies with 30 university students in a class about Ai and Digital Storytelling. Subscribe here for weekly reflections and updates on using Ai in the writing classroom.

iSophistry is the right use of ancient and new technologies to create new ways of thinking, so that you can make yourself Ai-proof in any field.

Pinned post from December 28, 2022

Welcome to Cyborgs Writing

This newsletter is a weekly reflection on my class AI and the Art of Digital Storytelling, which will focus on teaching students how to use AI to enhance creativity in thoughtful ways, while also developing AI literacy. Focusing on digital storytelling gives students a safe place to experiment and discuss the implications of these emer...

May 18, 2023

This Newsletter Will Self-Destruct in 3 ... 2 ... 1 💣 🔥

At the beginning of this semester, I committed to writing one newsletter a week reflecting on my AI & Digital Storytelling. And yes, I made it! I really appreciate you sticking around and reading my work. I will be continuing my explorations on Substack, focusing on how rhetoric can enhance prompt engineering, as well as how cultures a...

May 11, 2023

Using AI to Reflect on Student Reflections

This is my penultimate newsletter of my series discussing my AI & Digital storytelling class. I'll soon begin a free Substack series on rhetoric and prompt engineering, leading to slight changes. If uninterested, let me know or unsubscribe. I've also launched a Medium publication named Creative AI for others writing about AI. More abou...

May 2, 2023

Building an AI Feedback App

There are only a few issues left of this newsletter. I've had a lot of fun and will continue sharing creative uses of AI, but I will be moving my newsletter to Medium.com. The newsletter will still be free. ➡ If you would like to continue getting this newsletter, sign up for Cyborgs Writing on Medium. (If you are curious why I chose Me...

April 20, 2023

Using Interactive Fiction to Teach Style Guides

I don't teach literature ... I'm just sneaking professional writing into an "Adventures in Literature" class. Of course, students are learning some literary principles and what makes good storytelling, but they are also learning how to use AI in ethical and creative ways. That said, we've had a lot of fun, telling many stories ... few ...

April 12, 2023

4 Ways My Students Are Thinking about Finals in an AI World

Yes, my friends finals week is on the horizon. I can feel the stress in the air. Students have many high stakes projects coming up ... and of course, whatever final assessments students choose to send their way. It is also the most important time to take a moment and reflect. Since I am teaching one of the few courses focused on AI wri...

April 4, 2023

4 Takeaways from Student AI Writers

One reason I am teaching AI & Digital Storytelling was to explore using AI with my students ... not necessarily to teach them how to use AI tools. AI technology progresses so fast ... and new ways of using AI in writing are being shared by droves. It is impossible to keep up, let alone teach it. In less than a semester, we've seen GPT-...

March 28, 2023

Using AI for Student Feedback

As we’ve seen in the last few weeks, writing dialogue is an interesting area to explore the limits and capabilities of AI. Since GPT is a language module that predicts text based probabilities, it has trouble with things like subtext. It can achieve this with some prompting… but it will be a predictable subtext. AI will not write any g...

March 21, 2023

Dialogue & the AI Proof Assignment

We rarely ask students to write out dialogue in the university, even though it is one of the best ways to make a story (whether in creative or professional) engaging. But it is hard ... and students avoid writing dialogue like the plague, even when specifically asked to write dialogue. This week, my students and I delved into the world...

March 13, 2023

AI & Tech Writing ... Now for Something Completely Different

Or is it? The fun part about exploring digital storytelling is that I see how the same AI techniques in storytelling can be used in other professions, like tech writing. One of my goals in this class is to circle back around into professional writing. Most of my students are first years who know very little about the importance of prof...

March 7, 2023

Using AI to Better Understand Plot & Story (so that students get less excited about ChatGPT)

This last week my students and I have been exploring the difference between plot and story ... which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. When students think of narrative or story, they are almost always thinking plot. When assigned to write a story, the vast majority of students simply write storylines. This happened ... this happe...

February 27, 2023

Using AI to Understand Literary Analysis Through Reverse-Engineering

This semester my students are experimenting with an AI word processor for fiction writers called Soduwrite that has been around since GPT-2. The community around Soduwrite is amazing. Believe it or not, writers have been writing many novels with the help of LLMs far longer than ChatGPT has been around. Last week, we had a power user fr...

February 13, 2023

Setting Default Constraints for Creative AI in the Classroom

The more I work with AI in the classroom, the clearer it becomes that we need to be consistently explicit about how and when we want students to use AI writing tools. But most importantly, we need to explain the why. Soon, using AI in our writing will be the default, just like word processors today. If we want students to handwrite the...

February 7, 2023

How to Explore the Interplay Between Human and AI Creativity

Most people treat GPT technologies as automatic text generators, but the actual key to using AI effectively is to look at it like a storyteller. Most storytellers see invention like going to the gym. You don't just go when you have a game coming up. You practice every day, examining ideas, looking for new associations, and exploring th...

January 31, 2023

Use These 3 Mindsets to Make Your Discussions About Plagiarism & AI More Meaningful

Most professional writing classes require students to think about the relationship between writing and technology. Every new technology changes not only how we write, but our attitudes towards writing. That is what we've been thinking about in my class recently before we take on AI text generators. The standardization of text emerged f...

January 23, 2023

How I Use the 3-Sentence Story to Introduce Students to Text Generation Without AI

My AI & Digital storytelling class is appropriately hybrid. We meet on Wednesdays in the classroom and every Monday students do class work asynchronously. This allows us to discuss and work on writing together every week, while giving them time to explore their own creative process. The first few weeks of Spring semester are usually aw...

January 16, 2023

4 Transformations Students Want from an AI Writing Class

As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, the impetus for teaching AI and writing emerges from my research into the creator economy, leading me to treat my classes more like a creator classroom. Cohort classes are big in the creator economy. Set up as an alternative to asynchronous and static online courses, students sign up to complet...

January 9, 2023

How I'm Using AI to Improve Student Outcomes (and add value for students)

My exploration of AI emerges from researching communities in the creator economy. Everyone is focused on how AI will disrupt education ... well, the creator economy has been doing this for a while. Education in the creator economy probably won't replace universities ... but it's going to give us stiff competition. Students run screamin...

January 4, 2023

Why I Am Teaching AI Literacy with Digital Storytelling

In all honesty, I proposed my upcoming class on AI and Digital Storytelling because of enrollment issues. Enrollment in the English department ... and our professional writing program ... is at an all-time low. Despite what I might call a golden age of writing, where more content is being written than ever before, and professionals are...

July 21, 2022

How To Use Poetry to Determine Ai Sentience (especially if you believe all the hype)

In 1967, Roland Barthes announced the death of the author… he forgot to announce the birth of artificial intelligence. According to Barthes’ most famous essay, “The Death of the Author,” nothing we write is truly original. In the words of Kirby Ferguson, everything is a remix. That genius work of literature you love didn’t just spring ...