CMSC 33231

Topics in HCI: Writing with AI

Spring 2026  •  University of Chicago
Writing with AI — a human hand and a robotic hand, both writing with a pen
Instructor Mina Lee
Time Friday 1:30-4:30 PM
Location DSI 1035460 S University Ave.
Please enter through the South and North entrances of the building.

Overview

How is AI changing what we write, how we write, and who we are as writers?

This interdisciplinary seminar course explores the topic of AI and writing at the intersection of human-computer interaction, natural language processing, computational social science, education, and beyond. Students will review prior research, identify current opportunities and risks for AI writing assistants, and envision future designs in the area. The course includes weekly paper presentation and discussion as well as hands-on activity to experience and reflect on writing with AI.

  • Prerequisite: None. Open to students from any discipline.
  • Elective: Counts toward the CS elective requirement (AI/ML and HCI).
  • Auditing: Auditors are welcome with instructor permission. Please email to request.
⚠ This syllabus is tentative and subject to change. This is the first time this course is being offered, and we will refine it together as we go. Your feedback and suggestions are always welcome throughout the quarter.

Format

Each class meeting will roughly follow this format (Week 2-9):

Contents Duration
Part 0 Pulse: Writing with AI in the news 1:30-1:40 PM (10 min)
Part 1 Deep dive: Writing with AI in research 1:40-2:50 PM (70 min)
Paper presentation 1 20 min
Paper presentation 2 20 min
Discussion 30 min
Part 2 Practice lab: Writing with AI for your own use 3:00-4:00 PM (60 min)
Instructions & Demonstration 15 min
Writing 30 min
Reflections 15 min
Part 3 Open studio (Flexible time for feedback, check-ins, and continued work) 4:00-4:30 PM (30 min)

Course Schedule

The topics are organized based on the five aspects of AI writing assistants in Lee et al. (CHI 2024):

  • Task: Writing stages, contexts, and purposes that writing assistants aim to support
  • User: Characteristics and preferences of users of writing assistants
  • Technology: Building blocks of developing underlying models that power writing assistants
  • Interaction: Diverse interaction paradigms and essential user interface components of writing assistants
  • Ecosystem: Broader context in which writing assistants operate, including economic, social, and regulatory considerations that impact how these systems are deployed, used, and evolved

Readings are subject to change and will be finalized two weeks before each class meeting. Finalized readings are marked with ✓ next to the week number.

Show:
Deep Dive Practice Lab
Week 1✓
Mar 27		 Background: What is writing with AI?

Papers

  1. CoAuthor: Designing a Human-AI Collaborative Writing Dataset for Exploring Language Model Capabilities (Lee et al., CHI 2022)
  2. A Design Space for Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants (Lee et al., CHI 2024)

Additional references

  1. Ghosts by Vauhini Vara [Link]
  2. Stanford HAI Seminar with Vauhini Vara: The Impact of AI on Writing [Video]
  • Identify a writing task and a concrete project you want to try writing with AI this quarter.
  • Reflect: Why are you interested in using AI for this task? What does that tell you about the task and your relationship to it?
  • Capture your current approach: What AI systems do you use? How often, for what tasks, and in what ways?
Week 2✓
Apr 3		 User: What impact does writing with AI have on our writing and judgment?

Papers

  1. Biased AI Writing Assistants Shift Users' Attitudes on Societal Issues (Williams-Ceci et al., Science Advances 2026)
  2. Writing with AI Can Reduce Gender Bias in Hiring Evaluations (Liu et al., CHI 2026)

Additional references

  1. Does Writing with Language Models Reduce Content Diversity? (Padmakumar and He, ICLR 2024)
  2. AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuances (Agarwal et al., CHI 2025)
  • Experiment with prompting strategies from the readings and compare outputs. Does the AI steer your writing in a particular direction (e.g., stylistically or ideologically)?
  • Reflect: How do the suggestions make you feel about your own writing?
  • Do you want to steer the AI toward your voice and values, or do you want to use the AI's suggestions to challenge and expand your thinking? Apply prompting techniques to your writing task to achieve your desired outcome.
Week 3
Apr 10		 Task: How should AI support different kinds and processes of writing?

Background

  1. A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing (Flower & Hayes, College Composition and Communication 1981)

Papers

  1. A Design Space for Writing Support Tools Using a Cognitive Process Model of Writing (Gero et al., In2Writing 2022)

Additional references

  1. The Metacognitive Demands and Opportunities of Generative AI (Tankelevitch et al., CHI 2024)
  • Explore multiple AI writing assistants designed for different cognitive processes of writing (planning, drafting, and reviewing) or design your own.
Week 4
Apr 17		 User: What impact does writing with AI have on our brains?

Papers

  1. The AI Memory Gap: Users Misremember What They Created With AI or Without (Zindulka et al., CHI 2026)
  2. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (Kosmyna et al., 2025) *Abstract, Summary of Results, Experimental Design (22-51p), Discussion (143-151p)

Additional references

  1. A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts (The New Yorker, 2025) [Article]
  • Write with the AI for 10 minutes, then write without AI for 10 minutes. Compare the two processes and outputs
Week 5
Apr 24		 Interaction: What new ways of writing does AI make possible?

Papers

  1. Collage is the New Writing: Exploring the Fragmentation of Text and User Interfaces in AI Tools (Buschek, DIS 2024)
  2. Textoshop: Interactions Inspired by Drawing Software to Facilitate Text Editing (Masson et al., CHI 2025) (Masson et al., CHI 2025)

Additional references

  1. Script&Shift: A Layered Interface Paradigm for Integrating Content Development and Rhetorical Strategy with LLM Writing Assistants (Siddiqui et al., CHI 2025)
  • Explore AI writing assistants with novel interaction paradigms.
Week 6
May 1		 Technology: How good can AI write, really?

Papers

  1. Readers Prefer Outputs of AI Trained on Copyrighted Books over Expert Human Writers (Chakrabarty et al., 2025) *Main text (1-13p)
  2. Collaborative Document Editing with Multiple Users and AI Agents (Lehmann et al., CHI 2026)

Additional references

  1. Who's a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans? Take Our Quiz. by The New York Times [Article]
  2. On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models (Bommasani et al., 2021) *Section 1
  3. More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner [Book] *Chapter 1
  • Apply advanced prompting techniques and agentic workflow to your writing task.
Week 7
May 8		 Technology: What are ethical dilemmas around data that powers AI writing assistants?

Papers

  1. Creative Writers' Attitudes on Writing as Training Data for Large Language Models (Gero et al., CHI 2025)

Additional references

  1. The Foundation Model Transparency Index (Bommasani et al., TMLR 2024)
  2. More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner [Book] *Chapter 2
  • Look up the data and privacy practices of 2-3 AI writing assistants you use, reflect on how they align with your values, and what concrete measures you can take to protect your data.
Week 8
May 15		 Ecosystem: When should we disclose AI use in writing and how?

Papers

  1. Which Contributions Deserve Credit? Perceptions of Attribution in Human-AI Co-Creation (He et al., CHI 2025)
  2. What Influences Readers' and Writers' Perceived Necessity of AI Disclosure? (Fang et al., FAccT 2026)

Additional references

  1. A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared. by The New York TimesTuhin Chakrabarty, a professor of computer science at Stony Brook University, used Pangram to check more than 14,000 self-published novels on Amazon for A.I. writing. The program found that nearly 20 percent of the novels had been substantially written by A.I. Looking mostly at novels released between 2024 and 2025, Chakrabarty saw a 41 percent jump year-over-year in how many novels in his random sample contained a large amount of A.I. generated text, he said. [Article]
  2. AI Attribution Toolkit by IBMThis is what I used to generate the attribution mark for the image at the top of this page! [Tool]
  3. How AI disclosures in news help — and also hurt — trust with audiences by Trusting News [Article]
  • Experiment with different AI disclosure practices in your writing (e.g., AI Attribution Toolkit, Process Feedback) and design your own approach.
Week 9
May 22		 Ecosystem: What is the future of writing and writing education?

Papers

  1. Future of Writing & Writing Instruction (Kaufer and Ishizaki, 2025)
  2. From Crafting Text to Crafting Thought: Grounding AI Writing Support to Writing Center Pedagogy (Liu et al., CHI 2026)

Discussion

  1. How necessary are writing skills in the future?
  2. What is gained and lost through the use of AI in writing?
  3. What should writing education prioritize in the age of AI?
  • (Student presentation)
Week 10
May 29		 No class

Coursework

Weekly Reading and Participation

Writing with AI in the news

If you come across an interesting news story or development related to writing with AI, share it in the #news channel and bring it up during Part 0 of class. It doesn't have to be directly tied to the week's topic, but you're always welcome to connect it to the topic (optional).

Paper reading

Each week, we read 2 papers together.

Before class: Read all assigned papers and engage on the discussion platform

  1. Leave at least one comment on each paper (due Wed at noon)
  2. Reply to at least one classmate's comment on each paper (due Fri at noon)
  3. Read additional references (optional)

During class: Participate fully in discussions and activities. Come prepared to share your perspectives on the readings. If you have any difficulties, please discuss alternatives with the instructor.

Team Presentation

Once a quarter, your team leads a full class session.

One week prior to your presentation:

  1. Share your slides, discussion questions, and activity materials with the instructor (due Fri at noon the week before)
  2. Meet with the instructor to review (during Part 3: Open studio of the class the week before)

Paper presentation (25 min per paper)

  • Cover the paper's goals, contributions, methods, results, and key takeaways.
  • Note strengths and weaknesses; connect to current events and your own experience.
  • Take questions and explain the rationale behind the authors' key decisions.

Paper discussion (30 min)

  • Highlight key themes, tensions, or open questions raised by the papers.
  • Prepare 3-5 discussion questions to facilitate thoughtful critique and reflective engagement.
  • Foster inclusive participation; guide the conversation while staying open to unexpected directions.
  • Connect to prior course topics and real-world applications; summarize key takeaways at the end.

Practice lab (60 min)

The goal of the practice lab is to help everyone optimize a writing task of their choice using AI by experimenting with new ways to write while connecting to the week's topic. Everyone can bring a piece of writing they are currently working on (or want to work on).

The presenting team designs and leads the lab. Your lab should follow this structure:

  • Instructions & Demonstration (15 min): Introduce the week's topic through the lens of writing practice. Provide a concrete "tool" for students to use during the writing session: a tool can be a checklist, a set of prompts, a workflow, or a technique drawn from the week's readings. Demonstrate it briefly with a live example.
  • Writing (30 min): Students apply the tool to their own writing using AI. The activity should surface something specific about how AI shapes writing in relation to the week's theme (e.g., if the week is about bias, the team might provide a checklist of prompts to help students notice and reduce bias or stereotyping in AI-assisted writing).
  • Reflections (15 min): Students share what they wrote and one observation. The team closes with a reflection question: What did this reveal about writing with AI?

Class Project (elective credit only)

Choose one project from the options below. Projects are individual (no team component) and are designed to accommodate diverse backgrounds and interests.

Project A: Write a Tutorial

Create a public-facing tutorial that demonstrates how to optimize a specific writing task using AI writing assistants. Your tutorial should be clear, actionable, and grounded in hands-on experience. It should address a task of moderate to high complexity and go beyond basic prompting by incorporating agentic or multi-step workflows.

Example topics
  • A 7,500-17,500-word creative story pipeline that survives multiple rounds of planning, drafting, and existential revision with AI
  • A reflective diary workflow that experiments with new ways of thinking and writing, potentially using multiple writing assistants and analysis of past entries
  • An intelligent email assistant that accesses prior emails, adapts to your writing style and recipients, and diplomatically says “per my last email" without starting a war
Project B: Research Proposal

Write a research proposal that explores a specific question at the intersection of AI and writing. Your proposal should clearly define the problem, connect it to existing research, and outline a feasible approach to investigating it. Include the following sections: Introduction, Background & Related Work, Research Questions, Proposed Methods, and Expected Outcomes.

Example topics
  • The impact of AI tools on writing skill development
  • AI writing assistance for specific populations (e.g., non-native speakers, people with dyslexia)
  • Ethical considerations in AI-assisted writing (e.g., copyright, attribution)
  • AI and the future of writing
Project C: Design an AI Writing Tool

Design and prototype a new AI writing tool or workflow that explores new possibilities for how people write with AI. Your project may address an existing need, reimagine current practices, or experiment with bold and unconventional ideas. Ground your design in a clear vision of how the tool would be used and what it enables.

Project D: Project of Your Choice

Propose and complete a project related to AI and writing that aligns with your interests. This could build on an existing research project, explore a specific domain, or take a creative or experimental approach. You should discuss your idea with the instructor within the first two weeks of class.

Deliverables

  • Week 3: Project proposal
  • Week 8: Final deliverable
  • Week 9: Final presentation in class

Grading

Seminar (P/F)
Meeting all criteria below earns a P.
  • Weekly reading and participation (min. 7)
  • Team presentation (min. B+)
Elective (A-F)
Meeting all criteria below earns an A.
  • Weekly reading and participation (min. 7)
  • Team presentation (min. A-)
  • Class project (min. A-)

Resources

There is no required textbook for this course. The following books are related to the topics covered in this course and may be of interest: