What Kind of Writer Is ChatGPT?
Last spring, a graduate student in social anthropology—let’s call him Chris—sat down at his laptop and asked ChatGPT for help with a writing assignment. He pasted a few thousand words, a mix of rough summaries and jotted-down bullet points, into the text box that serves as ChatGPT’s interface. “Here’s my entire exam,” he wrote. “Don’t edit it, I will tell you what to do after you’ve read it.”
Chris was tackling a difficult paper about perspectivism, which is the anthropological principle that one’s perspective inevitably shapes the observations one makes and the knowledge one acquires. ChatGPT asked him, “What specific tasks or assistance do you need with this content?” Chris pasted one paragraph from his draft into the text box. “Please edit it,” he typed.
ChatGPT returned a condensed and slightly reworded version of the paragraph. The tweaked version removed the French term grande idée and Americanized the British spelling of “marginalization,” but otherwise wasn’t obviously better. Soon, Chris gave up on getting ChatGPT to edit his work. Instead, he outlined a passage that he wanted to add to the paper. “Please write this paragraph as you deem fit,” he instructed.
