Literacy and Work in the Digital World
Beyond using artificial intelligence (AI), researchers at Pitt are examining AI itself. In what ways does the accelerating technology impact life now and in the rapidly approaching future? In a world of generative AI like ChatGPT, what will work and literacy look like?
Morgan Frank, assistant professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems at the School of Computing and Information, is working to create maps to identify and quantify what skills thrive and decline in the face of technological change, and what areas face the biggest impacts. Maps of how skills are grouped, he believes, will help workers and organizations prepare for the new technology—or adjust on the fly with real-time information.
Even for a researcher whose work is enmeshed in the computing world, Frank says he could not have imagined the new pace of change. “The worst possibility is mass technology unemployment,” he says. “We hope to prevent that by looking at the probabilities of automation in different jobs.
“Generative AI is the first big jump in my awareness of my own use of the technology. It’s shattering assumptions.” Frank displays a generative AI program that receives plain English commands to generate computer code—for decades a foundational task in tech jobs. “This ability did not exist a year ago,” he says.
Annette Vee, associate professor and director of Pitt’s Composition Program in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of English, works to develop awareness of the technology we engage. Her 2017 book, “Coding Literacy: How Computer Code Is Changing Writing,” is a basic text in digital humanities and computer science education.
“It is crucial to have general education about our roles as humans in an increasingly digitized world,” she says. “It is literacy for citizenship so we can make informed decisions. We need to engage and be aware of how the technology works.
“AI raises an existential question: What is the point of writing? Do we need the same kind of writing for all spaces? In history, writing has always been central to bureaucracy. A lot of it is rote, not learning, not thinking,” Vee says. “It is important for any writer to engage and know how to use the tools, from entry-level people to senior leaders, to be able to tailor AI for templated writing.”