Bloom’s and Generative AI
AI is a growing part of our landscape, and some of the new tools are amazing. AI is helping to detect and diagnose disease earlier and more accurately. It’s central to the development of self-driving cars. And it’s helping to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. Other uses are more mundane, like helping to plan meals or workouts.
At first, I heard from students and educators who thought that AI might take over writing for us. Now, while some folks might wish that were true, we’re finding that it’s really not. Writing is a skill that is intimately connected with thinking, and while AI can help, it can’t think for us.
So where can AI help with writing? This chapter uses Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide our understanding about which parts of writing tasks AI can help with and which are better left to us humans.
AI, GenAI, and LLMs
People are talking about “AI,” but that’s really a misnomer. AI, artificial intelligence, isn’t really intelligent. It doesn’t think, and it isn’t conscious or self-aware.
The type of “AI” that produces text is a subset of AI called generative AI (genAI), which simply means that the AI produces (generates) output in response to a prompt. GenAI technologies for writing, like ChatGPT, are really just supercharged autocompletion programs. They predict the next word in a sentence and the next, and then predict what the next sentence will be and the one after that. Those predictions are made by large language models (LLMs) which combine a vast quantity of written text with a numerical analysis of what typically follows a given word or phrase.
In this chapter, I’ll use “generative AI” or “genAI” rather than the more general and less accurate term, “AI.” If you’d like to understand the terminology better, I recommend look at a site like CNET’s “ChatGPT Glossary” (Khan).
Bloom’s and GenAI
GenAI can’t think for us, but it can assist with our intellectual work, as long as we understand the kinds of work it does well. Bloom’s Taxonomy can help us break this down.
The Cognitive Process Dimension and GenAI
This chart[1] identifies GenAI’s strengths and human strengths using the revised version of Bloom’s cognitive dimension:
| Traditional Description | What GenAI Does Well |
What Humans Do Well |
|
| CREATE | Put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure | Remix or merge based on pre-existing patterns; suggest a range of alternatives | Formulate original content, incorporating divergent thinking and human judgement; collaborate; integrate content from human emotions, experiences, and cultural contexts |
| EVALUATE | Make judgements based on criteria and standards | Make basic judgements when provided a set of criteria; describe pros and cons of various positions or courses of action that are part of its dataset | Critique options and make judgements that involve ethical, cultural, and emotional considerations, including appraising conseque