Conceptualizing Parametric Writing with AI: From Command Line to GUI
Channel: John Sherrill
Date: 2023-02-18

Conceptualizing Parametric Writing with AI: From Command Line to GUI
or
GPT-x as writing infrastructure
John T. Sherrill
Qatar University

Presentation for Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC #4C23) 2023 session OD-54 / K.05 Infrastructures and/as Writing: Methodological Innovations and Pedagogical Approaches
The infrastructural turn has begun in writing studies, with a focus on writing as infrastructure and the social and material infrastructures of writing. This roundtable, consisting of authors of the upcoming CDQ special issues on infrastructure, creates space to discuss how the infrastructural turn translates to methodological innovation and pedagogical approaches.

This PechaKucha-style presentation proposes a potential graphical user interface (GUI) for ChatGPT and future GPT-X iterations, situating these technologies as writing infrastructure. I argue that such interfaces may soon reshape how writers and writing instructors understand writing—as a form of content production and management—bringing writing workflows closer to those of professional digital content creators. That is, understanding writing as a parametric process of rhetorical decision making by human designers, using semi-automated tools, to produce modular drafts, that can be extensively and algorithmically reworked. Sometimes it's important to precisely “hand code” writing. Sometimes that mental labor isn't critical, and the machine does well enough on “auto” settings. Finally, I suggest implications for teachers of writing. Not abandoning everything we teach about writing "by hand," but rather acknowledging that new tools extend our capabilities as rhetors and change our workflows, much like WYSIWYG editors have over the past two decades.