Image created with ChatGPT.
Intentionality and GenAI
My recent research has focused on GenAI ethics—particularly
transparency, disclosure, and policy. Alongside that, I’ve begun to ask GenAI
to assist with more day-to-day tasks. One such moment happened when my daughter
asked me to type up a document transferring her queen title to her best friend,
making her the head of a council in Legoville.
At first, I thought, Wow, they’re deeply invested in this
imaginative world. My next thought: Where do I even start with a royal
decree?
We saddled up to the computer, and I opened ChatGPT.
A Royal Request in Legoville
Then I paused—should I model going straight to GenAI for a
document? What best practices could I demonstrate here?
We prompted together and then began editing the output. She
had many changes to suggest, and our usage of GenAI fell into the category of “getting
us started with a template.” The final print out was a modified version of
the initial GenAI draft.
I explained to her why I allowed GenAI usaged for this task:
Why I Chose GenAI
1) The usage was for play.
This was a playful exercise. For more serious applications, I might use GenAI
to generate a few examples to get me started or produce a fill-in-the-blank
worksheet to help gather relevant content. Still, we discussed how using
someone else’s words isn’t the same as writing your own. Also, hallucinations were not going to be a deal-breaker for the queen and her head of council.
2) I had no idea where to begin with royal decrees.
Before GenAI, where would I have gone for inspiration? Microsoft Word
templates? A Google search? An encyclopedia? (Yes, we had World Books in our
house—sold by a door-to-door salesperson!). Reflecting on those past options
helps me better contextualize my usage today and decide how to proceed. If I had modeled a template from one of those outlets, I feel fine modeling a template from GenAI (and thinking through its accuracy).
3) This was not meant to exercise my brain.
If an activity is designed to challenge my thinking, I engage
with it directly before turning to GenAI. For me, writing is thinking. I
need that cognitive heavy lifting to organize my thoughts. I acknowledge that this
could become a shortcut too easily, where we focus on the output instead of the
process.
That’s why I’m teaching my daughter to pause and reflect on
her use of GenAI. What thinking might she be bypassing? That pause—that
reflective moment—is what I want her (and myself) to remember. Outsourcing is a choice, and one we should make thoughtfully.
Reflecting on My Own Usage
As part of this reflective practice, I asked ChatGPT to
create an audit of my own usage. In one response, I received a paragraph-style
summary of themes and categories. In another, it returned a table with star
ratings showing frequency and even trends over time.
One of my favorite uses of “Chatty” (as I sometimes call it)
is turning metadata into APA 7 citations. Formatting citations is not where I
want or need to spend my mental energy—it’s not a flex I need right now. But I
recognize that beginning graduate students do need to spend some brain time
here to learn citation mechanics and accuracy. Once they’ve learned the rules,
they’ll be better able to spot-check GenAI’s output. I’ve done that work, and I
now use GenAI as a citation generator.
The Final Decree
We printed her royal succession and abdication decree and
prepared it for ceremonial signing with her best friend. It was only afterward
that I said, “Wait—we forgot to disclose our GenAI usage!”
We’ll let it slide this time, as I’m disclosing it here in
this broader reflection.
Final Thoughts: Practicing Intentionality
Whether it’s for a queenly transfer of power in Legoville or
a professional writing task, I’m trying to model intentionality in GenAI use. I
want to emphasize the importance of asking: Why am I using this tool? What
am I gaining—and what might I be giving up?
These small pauses are the key to ethical and thoughtful GenAI
use.
How do you think about and maintain intentionality in
your own GenAI usage?
GenAI Usage Disclosure: After writing a rough draft of this post, I asked ChatGPT to create a list of suggested edits. I then decided which edits to implement. This is another way for me to be intentional in my usage.
