13 Reflections on Learning
What I know now about using AI
Prior to taking this class, the most I had heard about AI was from my mom, a TA at UW-Madison, and the news, both sources that shed light on the negative side of AI, which is college and high students using AI to get out of writing papers or reading the required materials. As we’ve explored further the positives and negatives of AI in this class, I’ve realized that although these negative sides aren’t invalid, AI can be used in a responsible way. For example, when asked to summarize a book within 100 words, we got a well-written, concise, and accurate summary of the book. This exercise modeled how AI is very good at quick analysis and that kind of tool can come in handy when scientists need to analyze millions of data points that might take them a hundred times as long as it would for AI. From that perspective, AI is a tool that has great potential to change the world. That being said, AI does have drawbacks, including the lack of emotion and humanity found in its writing. As I said earlier, the summary we got for the book was very accurate and concise, but the writing style failed to show any of the subjectivity and emotions that human voices can bring into descriptions. AI is a tool, and taking the time to understand it’s strengths and it’s limits can inform humans on how to proceed with using it responsibly.
Active Listening
This week in health humanities, we reviewed how to demonstrate active listening in our interactions with others. Active listening is essentially putting your full attention on the person who is speaking to the point where you can recite and paraphrase back to them what they have just told you about. This type of listening also involves limiting distractions like your phone or not zoning out to think about something else, along with having body language such as maintaining eye contact to show your full attention to the person. This week, I used active listening frequently, but I have three notable examples to reflect on. The first one was trying active listening with my roommate after I got back from my classes. In this instance, I put my phone and computer away completely and made sure that as she was talking to me, I made eye contact and put my full attention on the stories she had from her day. She didn’t seem to find this behavior unusual because I try to do this already when we talk with each other. When it came to my next interaction, with my sister, I was on FaceTime with her, and she was detailing her very complex and consistently changing dance schedule to me. Usually, I end up needing her to repeat some of the dance schedule because I get easily distracted and/or zone out for a couple of seconds. During this specific call, I concentrated on what she was saying with more purpose than I might usually, and she was surprised when she didn’t have to repeat anything back to me after she was done talking. The last interaction where I used active listening was when I was talking to this girl on the bus. The active listening part occurred when she was telling me about this show that she was watching on Netflix called “Suits”. It was challenging not to say anything when she was talking about it because I’ve seen a lot of information about that show, but I let her run through what the show is about and everything she’s watched so far. This interaction was also not very different to a normal interaction I would have on the bus because it tends to be an environment where everyone keeps to themselves anyway, so the distractions were minimal.
Stanley Museum Visit
This week in health humanities, we visited the Stanley Museum and got a tour of their current exhibits. The theme of their current main exhibit is reflecting different cultural practices and beliefs around birth and death. One of the art pieces that stood out to me the most during this walk through was a large pink and rosy colored fish, with a large cutout towards the middle top that allowed access to the inside. This fish had somewhat human seeming eyes and lips, with scales going up the body of the fish. When dealing with objects like this that represent birth or death, they are clearly going to carry a lot of emotional meaning. During the visit we found out that this fish was a coffin that is specially made to match a important aspect of the person who has passed. In this way, this fish and other unique coffins like it offer as a symbol of sorts of this person’s life. Rather than making death more somber, the coffin can bring the charm of that person to the funeral. This sort of thinking about life makes funerals into more of a celebration of the other person’s life. This differs from my experience with a typical funeral, one where everyone is rather somber throughout the whole experience, including in the clothing (black) and the coffin (blank, dark rectangular box). In all, these ways of thinking about death are all ways of processing a large change and the new emotions that come with them. Humans are known to struggle with change and without these practices, we wouldn’t be able to adapt to a new situation.