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Brown Bag Biography: “Me, or ChatGPT? Testing the Limits of GenAI and

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Generative AI (GAI) tools have charged conversations about authorship, authenticity, and agency (of both human and bot). Who, we might ask, is (really) the author of AI-generated text? Such a question is urgent to auto/biography studies, a field invested in the idea that individuals construct selves and make meaning of experience by working with, in, and through language. Now, however, in response to a prompt, GAI can assemble an auto/biography on our behalf– one that reflects what its model predicts the subject and content should include. The introduction of AI (as amanuensis? co-author? ghostwriter?) therefore puts terrific pressure on how we’ve theorized the auto/biographical act, and raises urgent questions about the assumptions and norms that are baked into the versions of us these tools produce. To consider what it means to write auto/biographically with GenAI, I will share findings from tests I’ve run with ChatGPT, currently the most widely-used platform. What does it look like when GenAI writes life narrative? What do such texts reveal about what these tools think constitutes a meaningful experience and an authentic subject? In taking up these and other questions, I will reflect on how open GenAI tools may transform not only the production but also the conception of auto/biography, and at what cost." Dr. Laurie McNeill is a Professor of Teaching in the Department of English Language and Literatures and Associate Dean, Students in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Her research in auto/biography studies focuses on the production and reception of life narratives and testimony in digital and archival spaces. She is co-author, with Sonja Boon, Julie Rak and Candida Rifkind, of The Routledge Guide to Auto/Biography in Canada; co-editor, with Kate Douglas, of Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives (Routledge), and co-editor, with John David Zuern, of Online Lives 2.0 (a special issue of the journal Biography), and Comic Lives (a special issue of A/b: Autobiography Studies). She also leads initiatives and research at UBC and institutions across Canada related to rethinking academic integrity policy, procedure, and pedagogy, including her current collaborative project, We’re Only Human? Artificial Intelligence, Academic Integrity, and Writing in the Faculty of Arts.

Event Sponsor
Center for Biographical Research, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Laura M. Dunn, 808-956-3774, biograph@hawaii.edu