Mina Lee's TSB Colloquium

On May 22, 2025, Mina Lee, an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Data Science at the University of Chicago, presented during the last Technology and Social Behavior Colloquium of the 2024/2025 school year, hosted in Northwestern’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design. Lee’s research on writing with AI and her focus on its transformative effects on individuals’ writing process, content, and identity as writers sheds light on AI’s helpful or detrimental capabilities. In a world where 400 million people use ChatGPT weekly, it’s essential to understand how writers’ writing is being reconstructed when AI is left to its own devices. In a study conducted by Lee, 1,445 writing sessions took place between 63 users and ChatGPT, and the results were eye-opening. When AI was used collaboratively, meaning users edited the responses provided by the AI until a satisfactory response was given, responses had the fewest spelling and grammatical errors and the most diverse vocabularies. This means that when AI responses are repeatedly reworked, the results are better and more aligned to the user’s style and voice than when the first responses are the ones chosen. In another study using AI to revise resumes, those that used the AI interactively were hired more often than those that did not.   

While these results depict the benefits of AI when used collaboratively, there are still concerns regarding the homogenization of writers’ voices. When asked by a faculty member in the audience about this, Lee revealed that yes, writing with AI can reduce the content diversity of responses. However, it depends on the model utilized; an instructional model instead of a chat-based model decreases the diversity exponentially. Not all AIs behave the same or even create the same effects; exploring and understanding these differences will aid writers in choosing the most effective model for them and their capabilities.  

Even people who don’t use AI are exposed and affected by it due to its increasing integration into our virtual world. Therefore, unraveling AI’s short and long-term effects on language and behavior through research like Lee’s is vital to the future of written literary works. 

Thank you to Mina Lee for taking the time to present on this riveting topic. The TSB Colloquium series is sponsored by the Technology and Social Behavior PhD Program at Northwestern and led by Anges Horvat.