research-article
- Authors:
- Katy Ilonka Gero Columbia University, United States
- Tao Long Computer Science, Columbia University, United States
- Lydia B Chilton Computer Science Department, Columbia University, United States
CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 2023Article No.: 245Pages 1–15https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580782
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CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Social Dynamics of AI Support in Creative Writing
Pages 1–15
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ABSTRACT
Recently, large language models have made huge advances in generating coherent, creative text. While much research focuses on how users can interact with language models, less work considers the social-technical gap that this technology poses. What are the social nuances that underlie receiving support from a generative AI? In this work we ask when and why a creative writer might turn to a computer versus a peer or mentor for support. We interview 20 creative writers about their writing practice and their attitudes towards both human and computer support. We discover three elements that govern a writer’s interaction with support actors: 1) what writers desire help with, 2) how writers perceive potential support actors, and 3) the values writers hold. We align our results with existing frameworks of writing cognition and creativity support, uncovering the social dynamics which modulate user responses to generative technologies.
- Footnote
2 Although we did not explicitly ask about language, one writer mentioned that his first and more proficient language is German, but he prefers to do creative writing in English.
Footnote3 Notably the categories for “desires” align with parts of the updated cognitive process model of writing [17]. While the researchers were not attempting to shoehorn the results into this model—for instance, there are many aspects of this model that did not result in categories—knowledge of the model influenced the naming of the categories.
Footnote4 Two writers, W3 and W6, rarely sought feedback from peers. Instead, W3 saw successful publication as a kind of useful feedback. W6 talked about how getting lots of feedback was one way to write, but it wasn’t the way he was writing.
Footnote5 Unknowingly responding to this, S13, a professional genre fiction writer, noted that her beta readers never noticed when she started using SudoWrite. Some beta readers would even comment on phrases they particularly liked, and these phrases would be phrases written by SudoWrite. The writer was shocked.
Footnote6 GPT-3 [7] stands for General Purpose Transformer, v3.
Footnote7 We could imagine further follow-up questions, such as why should a poem contain images of the natural world?
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Index Terms
Social Dynamics of AI Support in Creative Writing
Computing methodologies
Artificial intelligence
Natural language processing
Human-centered computing
Human computer interaction (HCI)
Empirical studies in HCI
HCI theory, concepts and models
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CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2023
14911 pages
ISBN:9781450394215
DOI:10.1145/3544548
- Editors:
- Albrecht Schmidt
LMU Munich, Germany60028717
, - Kaisa Väänänen
Tampere University, Finland60011170
, - Tesh Goyal
Google Research, USA60006191
, - Per Ola Kristensson
University of Cambridge, UK60031101
, - Anicia Peters
University of Namibia, Namibia60072704
, - Stefanie Mueller
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA60022195
, - Julie R. Williamson
University of Glasgow, UK60001490
, - Max L. Wilson
University of Nottingham, UK60015138
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- Published: 19 April 2023
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- creative writing
- human-AI collaboration
- language models
- writing assistants
- writing support tools
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