✍️ Coursework (Formative)
2023/24 Autumn Term
🎯 OBJECTIVE: Write a 1,500-word essay using Quarto Markdown and Zotero. (See 💻 Week 04 lab). Try using a custom theme (see this Quarto documentation page for information on Quarto HTML themes) to make your essay look more professional.
⌛ DUE DATE: 30 November 2023.
🗺️ Context
For better or for worse, generative AI changed the way we think about algorithms, data science and machine learning. It brought about many uncomfortable questions.
Scenario
You are a data scientist and you are writing an online article for LSE Blogs.
You have stumbled upon these two articles:
- Milmo, Dan (2023) “Microsoft accused of damaging Guardian’s reputation with AI-generated poll”. The Guardian – (Milmo 2023a)
- Milmo, Dan (2023). “Two US Lawyers Fined for Submitting Fake Court Citations from ChatGPT”. The Guardian – (Milmo 2023b)
Your task
You are writing a blog post that reflects and comments on these two articles and more widely tackles the following topic: “Potential of misuse of generative AI tools, lessons from a few recent cases”. You do not need to use this exact title, just make sure you are writing about the same topic.
Your target audience is a general audience of non-experts, so you should try to explain the main ideas and arguments clearly and concisely. You should also try to make your writing as engaging as possible so that your readers can easily follow your arguments and understand the main points.
📝 Instructions
What we are looking for
Now here is what you need to do:
Read the two Guardian articles mentioned above. Use these articles and the concepts and techniques you’ve learned from DS101A (as well as any other readings you might have made) to consider the following questions:
- can you briefly explain what the main ideas of the Guardian articles are and explain the basic principles behind the algorithms they mention?
- can you make connections between the ideas we have discussed throughout the course and the case studies?
- What are the core problems these case studies bring to the surface?
- can you reflect beyond these specific cases and think about the wider implications of misusing generative AI tools?
- can you explain the main ideas and arguments clearly and concisely?
- can you use the right tone and style to engage your readers?
Structure of the Essay
Your essay must be written in Quarto Markdown. You can use the template provided in the lab. Check, also, the readings listed on Weeks 7 & 8 of the 📔 Syllabus.
Feel free to modify the layout and aesthetics of the template. You can also add images, tables, bullet points, etc. to your essay.
On top of the two main references (i.e Guardian articles), you must also include at least 5 other references. You must cite these references in your markdown using Zotero (revisit 💻 Week 04 lab).
- Any ideas, arguments or results that were not produced by your mind must be cited in the references.
- 👉 Avoid making explicit references to the course (e.g., writing things like “As we saw in Week 05…”), as this would go against the spirit of the exercise, which is to write to a general audience. Instead, refer to the bibliography we have provided and try to make connections between the ideas we have discussed and the case study. The same goes for AI-generated text.
Do not exceed 1500 words (bibliographical references and the (optional) generative AI section do not count).
Make your writing clear, do not hide your thoughts behind jargon. You are not writing an academic article. Your essay is emulating a communication you would send to work colleagues who have very different educational backgrounds. You can find tips on how to write clearly and make your argumentation coherent in the Resources on clean and logical writing section of the 📄 Resources on argumentation and logical fallacies page on the course website.
Do not plagiarise. It is not that difficult to spot that someone copied content from other sources and, frankly, it is very embarrassing if you get caught. Here is the link to the LSE regulation on plagiarism.
- You are allowed to use Generative AI to help you write your essay. But you are asked to report the AI tool you used and the extent to which you used it. Read more about Generative AI in the section below. Check the Generative AI Policy for how reference use of Generative AI in your essay.
Make sure you address all the questions.
🤖 Using AI help?
You are allowed to use Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to help you write your essay. If you do use it, however minimal use you made, you are asked to report the AI tool you used and add an extra section to your essay to explain the extent to which you used it (this won’t count towards the word limit).
Note that, while these tools can be helpful, they tend to generate responses that sound convincing but are not necessarily correct. Another problem is that they tend to generate responses that are formulaic and repetitive; thus, limiting your chances of getting a high mark.
In effect, you are asked to explain the following:
- What AI tool did you use?
- How did you use it? For example, did you use it to generate ideas, write a draft, proofread your essay, etc.?
- How much of your essay was written by the AI tool? For example, did you feed it the entire prompt and it wrote the entire essay? Or did you feed it guided questions?
- If you didn’t edit the AI tool’s output, what was the output like? For example, did it produce a coherent essay?
- What did you do to make sure that the AI tool did not produce gibberish? and that the essay was not formulaic.
- Importantly, how did you ensure that the essay did not contain any plagiarism?
✅ Submission
- Render your Quarto Markdown file to HTML
- ⚠️ IMPORTANT ⚠️: Rename your HTML to
DS101A-2023-formative-essay-<CANDIDATE_NUMBER>.html, replacing<CANDIDATE_NUMBER>with your candidate number. For example:DS101A-2023-formative-essay-123456.html - Upload this file to Moodle under the appropriate assignment.
✋ Getting Help
- If you have any questions about the assignment, please post them on
#help-assignmentschannel on Slack. - Book office hours.
- Attend the drop-in session on Tuesday 21st between 4.30-6pm (COL 1.06).
- Organise a study group with your classmates.
📑 Marking Scheme
(You will be graded as if this was a summative assessment.)
The following is the marking scheme we will use to mark your essay. Note that full marks mean that you have met a particular criterion to an extremely high standard, beyond our expectations. If you did “everything right”, you should expect about 70% of the marks on each criterion.
| Detailed Marking Criteria | Marks |
|---|---|
| 1. The essay contains an introduction to the topic and it’s succinct and concise. | 5 |
| 2. Your writing style conforms to the blog post style, i.e your tone and writing style needs to be relatively informal without being clickbait-y (you can look at BBC, Guardian or LSE Blogs pieces for inspiration) | 4 |
| 3. You have adhered to the 1500-words limit | 1 |
| 4. Your Quarto Markdown formatting is appropriate for a blog post, e.g., style of headers, the inclusion of images, themes, etc. | 5 |
| 5. Your writing style is clear and free of excessive jargon and abbreviations. | 5 |
| 6. The essay concludes with lessons learned | 5 |
| 7. The essay has a logical structure and flow | 10 |
| 8. Your argumentation is coherent | 10 |
| 9. You have succintly and clearly explained the main ideas of both Guardian articles | 3 |
| 10. You have given a clear explanation of the main algorithms mentioned in both Guardian articles as well any algorithms you mention in your essay | 5 |
| 11. You have managed to build connections between the two Guardian articles given in the topic | 7 |
| 12. You have convincingly expanded the scope of your reflection beyond the case studies (i.e Guardian articles) we provided and built a solid argumentation on the wider implications on the use/misuse of generative AI | 25 |
| 13. Your argumentation is not only solid but creative as well | 10 |
| 14. You are widely read and make use of many judicious references (quantity matters but quality as well!) | 5 |