Conferences | SUNY Council on Writing

Call for Proposals, 2023

“Writing, Thinking, and Learning with AI:
Exploring Relationships of Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence”

Join us October 13–14, 2023, for a virtual conference hosted by the SUNY Council on Writing and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University

The recent attention given to the topic of artificial intelligence has been largely attributed to the introduction of ChatGPT, the conversational (and controversial) chatbot released by OpenAI. ChatGPT, itself an assemblage of many technologies like large language models, neural networks, and natural language processing that we colloquially simplify to “AI,” represents only a portion of the larger landscape of machine learning and artificial intelligence development that has taken place over decades. But the sudden explosion of public access to sophisticated generative AI programs like ChatGPT has pushed into the mainstream the idea that machines can “write” (perhaps even in ways some readers see as cogent and well-reasoned) in response to open-ended questions. What does it mean to practice rhetoric in this age of artificial intelligence? What does it mean, more broadly, to write, think, and learn? How does this new development in “writing technology” reshape our understanding and practice as human rhetors? What are the areas of concern and/or potential, and how do we address them in different disciplines and contexts? What rhetorical relationships of AI and writing, thinking, and learning might we wish to amplify or attenuate?

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