Writing Robots
This writing-intensive course surveys and analyzes accounts of AI-generated writing, while reflecting on the ramifications of AI for human writing practices. In other words: how do we write about—as well as with—writing machines? How are emergent AI writing technologies reshaping human writing cultures in STEM fields and beyond? How, in turn, do accounts of and interactions with writing machines shape cultural conceptions of human writers and thinkers, as well as technological frontiers for AI developers? What does it mean to write for someone else, or to let someone or something else write for us? How do preoccupations fundamental to all writing—audience, context, aims, and aesthetics—shape both non-human and human writing?
Topics
- To address these questions, we will analyze a broad range of texts framing these questions, including chat transcripts, essays, and journal articles, alongside novels, plays, and podcasts. Students will track and research a sub-topic of their choosing through a cumulative series of summaries, essays, and opinion pieces, while chronicling their developing writerly identities by reflecting on readings and assignments in a course journal. At semester’s end, they will revise and present a writing portfolio reflecting their strongest work.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to 1) Analyze how technological developments are communicated to different audiences, and across different genres. 2) Identify, reframe, and synthesize representations of a particular technology. 3) Identify, synthesize, and analyze the media, interfaces, and methods by which a particular technology shapes its use and its users 4) Support arguments about technology and science-related topics using those identified and synthesized elements. 5) Develop and articulate a set of writerly practices, preferences, and beliefs in relation to writing in general, and automatic writing in particular.
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027