By Patricia Waldron
Artificial intelligence-based writing assistants are popping up everywhere – from phones to email apps to social media platforms.
But a new study from Cornell – one of the first to show an impact on the user – finds these tools have the potential to function poorly for billions of users in the Global South by generating generic language that makes them sound more like Americans.
The study showed that when Indians and Americans used an AI writing assistant, their writing became more similar, mainly at the expense of Indian writing styles. While the assistant helped both groups write faster, Indians got a smaller productivity boost, because they frequently had to correct the AI’s suggestions.
Mor Naaman, the Don and Mibs Follett professor of information science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and Cornell Bowers, is a co-author on the paper.
Read more at the Cornell Chronicle.
Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
