The Wild and Wonderful World of AI

I dipped my toe into Artificial Intelligence a year ago. I don’t want to get lost in the dust or be written off because I am old. (age 70 this year).

I use AI to change dialogue into either a Gen Z or 19th century tone for a novel I am working on – The Legacy of Elizabeth B. The first female doctor should not talk like a Latina medical student of the 21st century, or a retired baby boomer. I have found AI very helpful in getting the diction right and fleshing out scenery details. For example, what kind of streetlights did New York City have in the 1850s? “The lamplighter extended his long wooden pole toward the gas lamp, lit it, and methodically worked his way up the street and down the other side.” The work in progress explores the careers of three generations of female physicians. Stay tuned.

I have used AI to cut words in an abstract from 300 to the required less than 250. Or to shave an essay from 2000 words to 1750. These types of efforts require careful editing of the AI-generated product — wordsmithing and adding back nuances so the product sounds right and is accurate.

In November 2024, I attended a half-day AI workshop at the Annual NAPCRG (North American Primary Care Research Group) meeting in Quebec, presented by the Stanford Healthcare AI Applied Research. We learned how to do a literature search with AI and how to analyze qualitative data. Both were useful skills for me and to share with students.

This past spring semester, I knew I had to address AI in the two undergrad classes, Communication in Healthcare, and the other Health and Public Health through the Lens of Culture, which I was teaching to pre-medical students. I posted the university policy: Use AI to generate ideas, but not to write papers. I showed students how to do literature searches through both Pub Med and with AI, discussing the problems with AI. I pointed out the concern about hallucinations (made-up references) and that the most recent publications are often not included.  I also used AI to generate a 5-page example paper for one class’s first assignment. The assignment was that each student select a country, research the key morbidity, mortality, and socioeconomic statistics, and then write a paper examining some aspect of how the COVID 19 pandemic was managed in the chosen country. My example was Palestine and COVID. I did quite a bit of editing to the AI generated product, putting in the concepts and citations I wanted to use, but overall, it worked well. I saved a lot of time and had a decent example.

Luckily, I did a better job of scrutinizing the product and didn’t have the experience of the Northeastern professor. (NYT article)

However, when I graded students’ papers the learning platform we use has a plagiarism detection function – Turnitin. One of my stronger students had a Turnitin report showing 73% use of AI on her paper. This was much higher than the other students, and much higher than the paper I had written with AI, which was 43%.

That sent me on a hunt to understand what triggered the detector and discovered: Grammarly – yes, AI-yes.

And how good was the Trunitin function? That led to a series of resource reads, emailed questions to the teaching center, contacting the writing support center, and linking in the assistant dean for whom I teach. I didn’t want to falsely accuse the student.

I was encouraged to ask the student for her drafts from google drive and word documents. She complied but was understandably concerned that her academic integrity was being questioned.

Bottomline: She was a good student. She had used Grammarly. I couldn’t access the drafts with what she sent me. I decided to go with my gut and trust her. I didn’t contact the academic dean.

This adventure generated much more to do and think about for next year’s class.

And then in case you missed the NPR blurb -- Only five of the 15 titles on the AI generated summer reading list are real.

Welcome to this wild and wonderful new world of AI. Like television and the smart phone, at some point life will be unimaginable without it.

GAZA and the West Bank: Consider signing and sending this letter about Genocide.