The professor behind an AI-generated textbook says that her error-ridden experiment was actually a resounding success.
Designed for a comparative literature course on medieval and Renaissance-era writing and announced by UCLA at the end of 2024, the digital textbook was immediately met with widespread mockery and derision from educators. Its AI-generated cover was riddled with incomprehensible text — “Of Nerniacular Latin To An Evoolitun On Nance Langusages,” for example — and featured generic visuals that had little to do with the period it was supposedly covering.
At the time, Elizabeth Landers, a grad student who helped put together the volume, said that the errors “aren’t a failure of AI.” Instead, she argued, “they’re an intentional artistic choice that prompts students to question their assumptions about language, meaning and historical truth.”
Now in a new interview with Inside Higher Ed in which the word “hallucination” isn’t mentioned once, the course’s professor Zrinka Stahulja called her decision to use an “AI-assisted” textbook a “no-brainer” because of all the time it saved her, helping her be an “approachable and accessible teacher.”
And incredibly, Stahuljak says she was surprised that her UCLA colleagues were so skeptical about her AI textbook. “I was really shocked that they couldn’t see that this textbook was my creation; it was carefully edited, just as if it had been printed,” she told IHE.
“I don’t see how a traditional textbook that costs $250 and is out of date within two years or three years, would be in some way better than a custom $25 AI-facilitated textbook that is based on my material,” she added.
The AI textbook was made with Kudu, a platform for creating digital textbooks started by another UCLA professor. Stahuljak says she created the textbook by supplying her own notes to the AI tool, which was instructed not to pull from outside sources. Students could interact with a built-in chatbot to help learn the materials, though she stresses it was designed not to write papers or complete assignments. Stahuljak also says the AI features made the book more accessible, with some students saying they listened to it while walking or at the gym.
After deploying the AI textbook, Stahuljak claimed that “engagement went up” compared to classes that didn’t use it. And perhaps soberingly, she viewed it as a preferable to having her students turn to ChatGPT for help.
“It’s better than some commercial version that has nothing to do with what you’re teaching or is pulling the information from the internet,” she said in the interview. “We’re losing that control when we are indiscriminately given ChatGPT or other commercial generative AI-powered tools.”
There’s a fair point or two being made, but Stahuljak isn’t addressing the numerous elephants in the room. AI chatbots are notorious for generating made-up facts and otherwise incorrectly reporting information, regardless of whatever data they’re being asked to pull from. A considerable and still growing body of evidence shows how AI tools may diminish critical thinking skills and attention spans. Then there’s the broader concerns over how the tech is threatening the very existence of learning institutions, as tech companies spend millions of dollars to capture schools and universities and use them to offload their products.
“This is truly bad and makes me wonder if we aren’t participating in creating our own replacements at the expense of, well, everyone who cares about teaching and learning,” one English professor wrote on social media after the AI textbook was announced, as quoted by IHE.
Others were even harsher.
“If you do this you should have your doctorate revoked and be thrown into the stocks at the center of the main university quad,” fumed another professor. “This is abandonment of professional responsibility to a degree that would be comical if it weren’t so self-serious.”
More on AI: Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read
The post Professor Says Her Garbled AI Textbook Was a Huge Success appeared first on Futurism.
