Ay-Ay-Ay, an episode on AI: How ChatGpt will impact teaching, learning, development work, and even podcasts.
We promise that this podcast write up is in fact written by a human being. But we can't say the same about this episode of GDP itself. In this episode we let ChatGpt do some of the work by scripting dialogue, and then we ask it to write an essay about climate change and climate justice. With us this week is Dr. Becca Babcock and Dr. Anders Hayden both from Dalhousie University. Dr. Babcock provides some reflection on the use of AI, and how she has managed to go as far as using it as a teaching tool in her classes. Dr. Hayden evaluates a ChatGpt essay and even gives it a grade. It's an episode for educators, students, and development practitioners who fear that AI may take their jobs. Worry not, as our guests this week discuss, AI remains a tool rather than a certain path of cyborgs taking over the planet. Dr. Becca Babcock is the Assistant Dean of Student Matters in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie University, where she also teaches writing. She has published two books: a novel, One Who Has Been Here Before (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing, 2021) and a short story cycle, Every Second Weekend (Blaurock Press, 2011). Her forthcoming novel, Some There Are Fearless (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing) is due this April. Dr. Anders Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University, with an emphasis on environmental politics. He is particularly interested in the concept of sufficiency and related post-growth ideas and initiatives. This interest has led him to examine issues such as sustainable consumption, work-time reduction, and the political and policy impacts of alternative measures of wellbeing and prosperity (“beyond GDP” measurement) in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Bhutan. He is the author of When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption & Ecology (Zed Books / Between the Lines, 1999). He is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance (Routledge, 2020) and Towards Sustainable Well-Being: Moving beyond GDP in Canada and the World (University of Toronto Press, 2022). Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter: @ProfessorHuish