AI in the Writing Process: How Purposeful AI Support Fosters Student Writing

Siddiqui, Momin N (ORCID:0000000318747789); Feliciano, Vryan (ORCID:000900058802641X); Pea, Roy (ORCID:0000000163013536); Subramonyam, Hari (ORCID:0000000234500447)

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-98459-4_14

AI language technologies increasingly assist and expand human communication. While AI-mediated communication reduces human effort, its societal consequences are poorly understood. In this study, we investigate whether using an AI writing assistant in personal self-presentation changes how people talk about themselves. In an online experiment, we asked participants (N=200) to introduce themselves to others. An AI language assistant supported their writing by suggesting sentence completions. The language model generating suggestions was fine-tuned to preferably suggest either interest, work, or hospitality topics. We evaluate how the topic preference of a language model affected users’ topic choice by analyzing the topics participants discussed in their self-presentations. Our results suggest that AI language technologies may change the topics their users talk about. We discuss the need for a careful debate and evaluation of the topic priors built into AI language technologies.

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