Assignment Details

Write a 500-word reflection on how AI was / could be applied to a work setting from your own life. Your response should be specific, detailed, and grounded in your own experiences and observations. This assignment serves two purposes.

1. It's an opportunity for you to examine your own experiences and assumptions about AI.
2. It's a way for us to get to know each other through sharing our diverse work experiences and perspectives.

Your reflection will help create meaningful discussions throughout the semester as we learn not just from the course material, but from each other's unique experiences.

Deliverables

A 500-word blogpost that addresses the below points. After posting, you must also comment on at least two other classmates posts, highlighting something that you found interesting — whether because it was surprising, resonated with a past experience, or because you disagree.

1. Introduce yourself by describing a workplace or professional setting you know well.

   • A previous or current job
   • An internship experience
   • A family business you've observed closely
   • A student organization or academic environment

   With as much concrete detail as possible, describe the key tasks, workflows, and challenges in this setting. What makes this environment unique or surprising to someone that hasn’t seen it before? What are the most time-consuming or challenging aspects of work in this context?

2. Based on your current understanding of AI capabilities:

   • Identify one specific task or organizational process in your chosen setting that could be affected by AI
   • Describe how you envision AI changing the way that it is done. Give details about the specific AI technology that you have in mind. Consider both potential positive and negative impacts.

   Be as concrete as possible in your examples. Instead of general statements like "AI will make things more efficient," describe specific scenarios like "AI could automate the weekly scheduling process, which currently takes managers 3 hours to complete."

3. Critically reflect on the limitations and potential drawbacks of AI integration in your chosen task or process. Potentially consider:

   • What parts would be difficult or impossible for AI to perform?
   • What human skills and qualities would remain essential?
   • What concerns do you have about AI implementation in this context?

   Feel free to express skepticism or criticism of the value AI applications where you feel it's warranted. Support your concerns with specific examples from personal experience or external sources as well as first-principles reasoning.

AI Policy. Use of AI is allowed. This assignment is essentially trivial with use of frontier LLMs, but the real value is in the genuine reflection that you produce yourself. My suggestion is for you to outline your thoughts and have the AI help you to turn them into prose.

If used, you must write a paragraph entitled “Summary of AI Use” where you summarize your interactions with the LLM and what tasks you used it for. Please also comment on whether anything surprised you or whether the chatbot failed at any particular tasks.

Submission Details

• On canvas, create a new "discussion" by going to "Discussions" and clicking "+ Add Discussion"
• Create and submit your blogpost.
  • The title should have your name and the blogpost number.
    • You can also add details of your post to encourage classmates to read it!
  • The first line in the blogpost should also indicate what blog post prompt you are responding to.
  • You must “Post” your blogpost by the associated due date to receive credit.
  • Do not change any of the default "options".
• By the following Thursday, you must comment on 2x of your classmates posts from the same week. Your comments should add value to the post by:
  • Acknowledging a part of the post that resonated with you or that you learned from.
  • Adding value by providing a new idea, perspective, or question. This could include connecting the ideas in the post to your own experience.
• In order to receive an official grade on Canvas, you should also submit an “Assignment”. For example, if this is your first blogpost, then submit the Assignment “Blogpost 1/4”. In that Assignment, provide links to:
  • Your original blogpost (e.g. https://gatech.instructure.com/courses/######/discussion_topics/#######)))
  • The 2x blogposts that you commented on.