Carly Schnitzler

Alicia Guo, Carly Schnitzler, Katy Gero

How might we govern a language model run for and by creative writers? While generative AI use is on the rise, many language models are created and owned in ways that limit writers' consent, participation, and control. We report on four workshops where over one hundred creative writers came up with and analyzed metaphors for language model governance, resulting in over two hundred metaphors: objects, places, processes, groups, and infrastructure that support reasoning about language model governance. What if a language model was like a community garden? Or a seed bank? Or the bathroom in a dive bar? We report on four themes: (1) the importance of consent, (2) how to define community boundaries, (3) ways to give contributor recognition, and (4) trade-offs in scale of language models. These metaphors point towards smaller, open models that encode group values. We discuss concrete ways to make community language models a reality.

Katy Ilonka Gero, Tao Long, Carly Schnitzler et al.

Although AI assistance can improve writing quality, it can also decrease feelings of ownership. Ownership in writing has important implications for attribution, rights, norms, and cognitive engagement, and designers of AI support systems may want to consider how system features may impact ownership. We investigate how the stage at which AI support for writing is provided (planning, drafting, or revising) changes ownership. In a study of short essay writing (between subjects, n = 253) we find that while any AI assistance decreased ownership, planning support only minimally decreased ownership, while drafting support saw the largest decrease. This variation maps onto the amount of text and ideas contributed by AI, where more text and ideas from AI decreased ownership. Notably, an AI-generated draft based on participants' own outline resulted in significantly more AI-contributed ideas than AI support for planning. At the same time, more AI contributions improved essay quality. We propose that writers, educators, and designers consider writing stage when introducing AI assistance.