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Irish Times
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Using ChatGPT to write an essay is a bit like using a forklift to lift weights
A couple of weeks back, I did a public event in a bookshop, for which I and two other writers were each required to pick three beloved books, and to talk about each of them for five minutes or so. Choosing the books I wanted to talk about proved an interesting challenge, because although I can easily think of any number of books I have read and loved, it is considerably less easy to think of books I have not only read and loved but can also remember well enough to talk to an audience about for five minutes. A major criterion for the books I chose, I have to admit, was that I knew them well enough to not have to re-read them for the event. I felt that I had in some sense internalised these books, in a way that could not be said for very many others I had read. In the few days afterwards, I began to wonder why it was that I remembered certain books so well, and others barely at all. It is not uncommon for me to read and greatly enjoy a book and then, within a year or two, remember next to nothing about it other than, perhaps, that I once read and greatly enjoyed it. But there are books that, many years after reading them, have remained a presence in my life. And these books – the ones that seem to belong to some small and select psychic library, whose volumes collectively account for my basic sense of myself as a literate person – are, I realised, the books that I have written about. The Information, Martin Amis 's comedy of thwarted literary ambition and writerly jealousy, features a protagonist whose career as a novelist has devolved into ceaseless book reviewing – a job in which he takes no real pride, but which he nonetheless does very well. 'When he reviewed a book,' writes Amis, 'it stayed reviewed.' It's a line that comes to mind when I think about this subject. It is, for me, the act of writing about a book that causes it to stay read. And a disproportionate number of the books that have stayed read for me are ones that I wrote about at university. I read Ulysses and wrote an essay about it; the essay, I can assure you, was not very good, but the book stayed more or less read. I read and wrote about the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, and those stories stayed read. I read and wrote about Edgar Allen Poe, and Poe has stayed read. The writing of those essays was in some sense inseparable from the depth and durability of the reading. READ MORE [ Zuckerberg saying AI will cure loneliness is like big tobacco suggesting cigarettes can treat cancer Opens in new window ] I am saying all of this now because of two facts that seem fairly self-evident: the fact that the writing of essays is a central aspect of an education in the humanities, and the fact that this centrality is increasingly threatened as a result of the widespread use of ChatGPT and other LLM (large language model) technologies. The general feeling among university administrators, if not necessarily among academics as a whole, seems to be that it would be futile to try to stop students using AI in their work. The technology exists, and in the narrow sense of producing a functional piece of writing on a given topic, it's an effective tool, and it's not going anywhere. I've spoken to a few academics in the humanities recently who seem resigned to (though by no means at peace with) the idea that assessing students through essays may no longer be a viable pedagogical approach. No one seems quite sure what will replace essay writing, but it seems likely that something – a greater emphasis on written exams, perhaps, or some form of oral assessment – will have to. I wasn't a particularly industrious student as an undergraduate. I half-assed a lot of my courses, and often didn't do nearly enough reading of supplementary material – works of academic literary criticism and other secondary sources – to give my essays a plausible veneer of academic credibility and rigour. The essays I wrote were not especially good, even by the standards of undergraduate essays. But I realise now that their being good or bad was of secondary importance to the writing of them. The writing of essays seems to me to have two main uses as an educational tool. It is useful as a means of assessing a student – how much they know, how widely and deeply they have read in a subject, and how rigorous and original their thinking on that subject is. The other is both less measurable and more significant: in writing an essay, you find out what you think about a subject; you learn, in some sense, how to think about it. [ AI is already a focus of endless delusion, magical thinking and plain old foolishness ] In a recent study conducted by MIT's Media Lab, three groups of participants, aged 18-39, were asked to write essays using, respectively, ChatGPT, Google's search engine and no technology at all. The brain activity of the participants was measured using EEG. Of the three groups, the ChatGPT users consistently had the lowest level of brain engagement, and 'consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioural levels'. As the study progressed, the group using ChatGPT got steadily lazier with each subsequent essay, often simply copying and pasting the text produced by the LLM, rather than using it as a source for their own work. One way of thinking about this, from an educational perspective, is that writing an essay is to one's intellect as lifting weights is to one's muscles. The point of going to the gym is not to get good at lifting weights; it's to train your body to become stronger. Using ChatGPT to write an essay is a bit like using a forklift to lift weights. The forklift might do a perfectly good job of moving around some heavy iron plates, but you'd be wasting your time. (You would also be causing a serious disruption, and would probably have your gym membership cancelled – and rightly so.) Just as you can't get someone, or something, to work out for you, there is nobody and nothing that can think on your behalf. As with so many of the supposed benefits of so-called artificial intelligence, it's not clear what we're actually gaining. What we stand to lose is so large, and so fundamental, as to be incalculable.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Delaware beams up Stacey Abrams, 'Star Trek' fan & author, for book tour. What to know
In under two hours, tickets to Stacey Abrams' book talk at Wilmington Public Library — featuring the renowned public figure, author and devoted 'Star Trek' fan — were sold out. Abrams will discuss her new thriller, 'Coded Justice,' when she tours to Wilmington on July 17. The event will be moderated by Jamar Rahming, library executive director. Abrams will join a long list of big names who have stopped by the library since 2020, such as Michael Vick, Common, Keke Palmer, Dennis Rodman and more. Here's what to know about Abrams, who is credited with helping Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election, plus some high-profile guests that the Wilmington Library wanted to bring in over the years, including controversial political commentator, author and social media juggernaut Candace Owens. Abrams has many titles including lawyer, New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur and producer. But most people know Abrams for being a political leader in Georgia. The Democrat served 11 years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, and was the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history, per her bio. In 2022, Abrams lost a high-profile gubernatorial race to Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. It marked her second defeat by Kemp in a gubernatorial election. Despite falling short of reaching the governor's seat, Abrams is credited for playing a big role in helping to turn Georgia blue in 2020, which helped Joe Biden win the presidential election over Donald Trump that year. Also in 2020, Abrams launched her production company, Sage Works Productions, Inc. She has been nominated for an Emmy Award, and her projects have received the NAACP Image Awards in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her documentary, "All In: The Fight for Democracy," which focused on voter suppression, was shortlisted for the Academy Awards in 2020, according to her bio. Abrams' website lists her as the Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics at Howard University. The internet was buzzing in 2022 after Abrams made a surprise guest appearance in the season 4 finale of the sci-fi series "Star Trek: Discovery." Her role? She was "President of United Earth." "One of the reasons I love 'Star Trek' is that it is not one thing. It is so many different shows, and its so many different vantage points," Abrams, who is a Trekkie, said in a video interview uploaded to the Paramount+ YouTube channel. She added, "And what has been so remarkable about every iteration of the show is that they take that same construct, but they do it so differently and so well that you never get bored with the journey." One notable guest the Wilmington Library was unable to host in a debate last year was Candace Owens, the Wilmington Public Library director told The News Journal / Delaware Online in April. Owens is a leading conservative political commentator famous for speaking her mind. That includes her 2021 appearance on Fox News' 'The Ingraham Angle,' where she criticized Stacey Abrams, then a Georgia gubernatorial candidate. Fighting for libraries: He turned one Delaware library into celebrity hot spot. Now he's fighting for their future 'I can't imagine why any person, any sane individual, would want her leading their state,' Owens said about Abrams. Owens' self-titled podcast on YouTube has over 4.3 million subscribers, and she commands an even larger following across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and has 6.9 million followers on X alone. The podcaster has earned praise from fans and strong opposition from critics for her critiques of LGBTQ issues and Black Lives Matter, her support for Donald Trump, and her involvement in heated debates. Owens also has upset members of the Jewish community upset and been banned from YouTube. Last September, during election season, Wilmington Library welcomed social justice advocates Angela Rye and Tamika Mallory. Mallory, co-founder of Until Freedom, is known for activism in cases like the killing of Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown. Rahming hoped for a debate among Owens, Rye, and Mallory, but it never materialized because the library director couldn't meet Owens' special request. 'She requires private jet travel because she's been accosted in airports and ... she was pregnant at the time, and she just was afraid because she felt unsafe in mainstream airports,' Rahming said. Other guests Rahming wanted to bring to the Wilmington Library, over the years, include former NFL star turned-activist Colin Kaepernick and NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Rahming wanted to host Kaepernick because he's a children's author and could discuss why he chose to become a social activist while he played in the NFL. 'Some of these people ... they'd don't fly commercial anymore. They require private jets,' Rahming told The News Journal in 2023. Abdul-Jabbar falls into that category. Fun in June: These are the best events at the Delaware beaches this summer 'I think he has an incredible story that would resonate with our community,' Rahming said about the NBA legend this past April. 'But he commands $100,000 honorarium and a private jet. So, there's no way that we could meet those terms.' It's important to bring in notable, diverse people from all different walks of life, whether Republican and Democrat, because Rahming wants to give the Wilmington community, which is over 50% Black, a chance to learn from world-class people, and ask them questions. Rahming said most of the library's high-profile events with celebrities have been free to the public, and many of their guests have charged either a small fee or nothing at all. The library, which has funded these events using only private money and not taxpayer dollars, has landed many of the guests they've reached out to, the director said. The new thriller "Coded Justice" from Abrams follows a former Supreme Court clerk who landed a job at a high-end law firm in D.C. where she gets make big money. She's now a corporate internal investigator. Her new client is a mega-tech firm that's on the forefront of developing a new integrated AI system that might revolutionize the medical industry. But strange things start to happen during the testing of this new tech, including the death of an engineer. Readers will dive down this deep, winding rabbit hole with the corporate investigator in 'Coded Justice.' The book releases on major platforms like Amazon on July 15. If you have an interesting story idea, email lifestyle reporter Andre Lamar at alamar@ Consider signing up for his weekly newsletter, DO Delaware, at This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Stacey Abrams is coming to Delaware with new thriller. What to know
Washington Post
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
After Biden's diagnosis, Jake Tapper's book tour is business as usual
'You guys want me to sing, right?' quipped CNN's Jake Tapper, as he and his co-author Alex Thompson, of Axios, settled into their seats onstage. It was an unusually rock-and-roll setting for a book talk: 9:30 Club is one of Washington's most storied music halls, with a capacity of 1,200 standing. (This event was seated; as of that morning, Politics and Prose Bookstore had sold a little over 300 tickets, priced at $45.30 each — hardcover not included.) The previous night, the club had hosted a singer-songwriter lab-engineered for Spotify's coffeehouse playlists; the next night, the rows of folding chairs would make way for a sapphic dance party, benefiting a reproductive access fund. All three of the venue's bars were open on this Thursday evening, requiring the P&P crowd — silvering, affluent, graciously suppressing irritation — to be carded at the door.
RNZ News
13-05-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Book Critic: new (ish) books for children
This month's theme does what it says on the tin! All these books have been published in the last year and are definitely worth talking about according to Catherine Ross, the Director of Library at Auckland Grammar School. More details can be found on Catherine's blog. Tags: To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
