FYS Lunch and Learn: Ethical AI Prompting

Cognitive offloading, we apply it every day—whether it’s making a note on your wall calendar or setting a reminder on your smartphone, or using spell check to revise typos in your writing. While these strategies can help you as a student, other forms of cognitive offloading have been shown to undermine learning and raise serious ethical questions. Generative AI in particular can mislead users by representing the writing process as frictionless and disembodied. To avoid overreliance, AI must be used with discernment, if at all.
This workshop is intended to help you use generative AI ethically in contexts where it is permitted. We start by helping you decide if AI use is appropriate for your goals and the task. We then share findings from a recent pilot study conducted by the Writing Center Director and two Writing Fellows, presenting 5 different levels of prompt engineering that reduce cognitive offloading and promote critical thinking. Participants will gain AI literacy skills, including strategies for preserving rhetorical agency and voice.

All students are welcome to attend. Faculty, please email write@pitzer.edu if you would like to bring your FYS class to this event.