A lot of academics were in the midst of devising policies and testing pedagogical responses to ChatGPT — the chatbot released in November that generates plausible-sounding, original text at a user’s command — when OpenAI this month announced a new version of the underlying software: GPT-4. It’s all been a bit dizzying. But as a writing instructor of 17 years, I was among those who tested the new version over the past six months. So I want to share a few observations on what to expect, how the update should affect our response to ChatGPT, and what this jump in sophistication suggests for the future.

Instructors and college administrators are grappling with many difficult questions arising from the emergence and public availability of generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT:

• What impact will AI have on post-secondary institutions?

• Can AI be integrated into higher education in productive and ethical ways?

• How will teaching and assessment change?

• What are the implications of AI for professional, institutional, and civic communication?

This free resource provides administrators and faculty with fundamental information about GenAI and its bearing on instruction and institutional policies. Eminently practical and informed by the latest (and forthcoming) technical developments, Talking about Generative AI will be a boon to anyone who is suddenly confronted with the problem of how to understand and address GenAI’s impacts.

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become widely available as writing aids, the Modern Language Association and the Conference on College Composition and Communication, a chartered conference of the National Council of Teachers of English, affirm our common values as organizations serving professional educators. We believe that writing is an important mode of learning that facilitates the analysis and synthesis of information, the retention of knowledge, cognitive development, social connection, and participation in public life. We believe that writing itself—from the earliest impression of marks on clay to recent word processors with autocorrect, research citation, and other aids—has always been a technology and, as such, is always open to new technologies. However, we also believe that human endeavors are at the heart of a humanities education—and education more broadly—and are concerned that support for writing and language learning programs could be under threat.

We affirm that the term writing describes a process as well as a product and that the labor of students, teachers, and writing professionals should be credited and compensated. We believe that higher education’s specific institutional role of credentialing the achievements of students as individuals means that generative AI cannot simply be used in colleges and universities as it might be in other organizations for efficiency or other purposes. To this end, we believe the primary work of educators is to support students’ intellectual and social development and to foster exploration and creativity rather than to surveil, discipline, or punish students.

This working paper explains the relevant history, nomenclature, and key concepts to our profession. Under this framework, the paper declares the broad risks and potential benefits of artificial intelligence to language, literary, and writing scholarship and instruction and the ways generative AI will affect all of us in higher education: students, scholars, instructors, administrators, and staff members. The paper then suggests principles and recommendations for creating policies, guidelines, and practices that draw on our strengths as teachers and scholars.