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Record W4415741689 · doi:10.1162/99608f92.dbc60044

AI and Writing in the Straddle Generation

2025· article· en· W4415741689 on OpenAlexaffabout
Benjamin Outar

Bibliographic record

VenueHarvard Data Science Review · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicCybernetics and Technology in Society
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsColumn (typography)StraddleFace (sociological concept)Technical writingAffect (linguistics)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

We've read a lot lately about how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the face of higher education.In this column, Benjamin Outar, an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, explores how the advent of modern AI tools such as ChatGPT collided with the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary switch to remote schooling, specifically to affect student writing.Defining his cohort as a "straddle generation" who learned the basics of writing prior to the generative AI explosion, he contrasts their attitudes towards writing with those of students just a couple of years younger-a generational shift in thinking.How has AI affected your schooling and your attitudes?Consider writing a column for Minding the Future and share your experiences.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.005
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.011
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.998
Threshold uncertainty score0.028

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0050.011
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0020.008
Scholarly communication0.0060.006
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0030.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.002

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.114
GPT teacher head0.348
Teacher spread0.235 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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