Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in "Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence"

In this post, I will be analyzing the rhetorical strategies, or more specifically, the ethos, pathos and logos used within my article. You can find the article I will be referencing here.

the Italian voice. "Writing my monthly articles" 03/09/08 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

Appeals to Credibility or Character:

• Which items on the bulleted list of "Appeals to Credibility and Character (Ethos)" on page 182 can you recognize in your text?
• In my article, I found:
• References to credible sources: 
• "Prof Hawking has claimed AI could result in the end of the human race."
• "Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has expressed concern over the ethical grey area that AI could pose."
• Word Choice:
• "AI"
• "ethics"
• "algorithms" 
• "intelligence" 
• Tone:
• Using his diction, Medlock was able to create a very academic and persuasive tone. 
• Author's public image:
• Ben Medlock is a co-founder and CTO of SwiftKey, a type of AI. He references his own company and how it has helped many people, including Stephen Hawking. 
• "At the heart of this system is a predictive artificial intelligence engine, developed by SwiftKey, the company I co-founded in the UK seven years ago."
• Acknowledgement of counterarguments:
• "Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has expressed concern over the ethical grey area that AI could pose."

• How and why would the author(s) use these strategies?
• The author would use these strategies because artificial intelligence is a very scholarly topic, especially when applied to real life. Therefore, he must come off as a credible source in order to even have a chance at persuading his audience. 
• How do these strategies affect the audience’s perception of the author's/authors' credibility and character?
• These strategies would definitely improve the audience's perception because he is at the front of AI innovation as a co-founder of SwiftKey. Also, by mentioning how it has helped someone as famous as Stephen Hawking, another scholar, the audience now knows how AI can improve someone's life. 
• How does the use of these strategies impact the effectiveness of the text’s overall message?
• I feel that these strategies improve the effectiveness. This is due to the fact that since the author comes off as a very credible source, since he is not worried about the risks of AI, the audience shouldn't be either. 
• Does/do the author(s) seem to have any biases or assumptions that might impact their credibility?
• Yes. As the CTO of SwiftKey, Medlock may only want to say good things about AI as to improve sales and advertise his company well. If people were afraid of the risks of AI, his company would fail. 

Appeals to Emotion: 

• Which items on the bulleted list of "Appeals to Emotion (Pathos)" on pages 182-3 can you recognize in your text?
• In my article, I found:
• Emotionally compelling narratives:
• "AI has the power to transform people’s lives. We integrated our technology into Prof Hawking’s software to allow him to make whole next-word predictions, rather than typing a letter at a time."
• Level of formality:
• Throughout the article, the author is very formal and does not insult anyone or even joke around about the topic.
• What emotional responses is the author attempting to create?
• Mostly, Medlock is trying to make the audience feel sad about disadvantaged people in order to incite their willingness to allow AI to improve their lives. 
• What is the actual result?
• I think that he was effective in creating this emotional response. Mentioning someone went from only typing a letter on a keyboard at a time to full words is certainly amazing and makes the reader want to see what else AI technology can accomplish.
• Are these emotions effective or ineffective for this particular audience and rhetorical situation?
• These emotions are effective. Even though it is more of an educated audience, the reason why we have all of these innovations is that we want to either improve or fix something. Therefore, mentioning that AI can help people makes scholars want to help the author's cause. 
• How do these emotional appeals affect the credibility of the author(s) or the logic of the text?
• I don't think the emotional appeals affect the credibility or logic. There is certainly logic behind wanting to help someone with a disability, and since the tone is strictly formal the credibility of Ben Medlock is not changed, maybe even improved.

Appeals to Logic:

• Which items on the bulleted list of "Appeals to Logic or Rational Decision Making (Logos)" on page 183 can you recognize in your text?
• In my article, I found:
• Historical records
• "However, the UK has a long heritage in this area, beginning with Charles Babbage’s 1837 design for a general purpose computing machine — his 'analytical engine'. "
• Statistics
• "To give some idea of the scale of the task ahead, research suggests there are more logical switches in the adult human brain than in all the world’s computers combined."
• Effective organization of sentences, paragraphs, ideas, images etc.
• The article overall is well-written and I could not spot any errors.
• Clear transitions between sections of text 
• Medlock clearly shows when he ends an idea and begins another. 
• What response is the author attempting to create by employing these strategies?
• He is attempting to create a well-rounded argument with support from current statistics and past records. Not only this, but an argument is mostly effective when the text is written well with no noticeable grammatical errors.
• What is the actual result?
• I believe that this resulted in what the author wished as bringing current and past sources definitely helped his argument. However, I wish that there would have been more than one example of each. 
• Are these strategies effective or ineffective for this particular audience and rhetorical situation?
• Scholars typically want references to other studies so that they can do their own research. This also makes the author overall more credible because their opinion is supported by other people, more specifically, scientists. 

Reflection:

After reading through the posts by Scott and Addie, I learned that authors typically use more logos and ethos rather than pathos strategies. Maybe this is just the normal way articles are written, or maybe because they realize that pathos could affect their credibility. In both of their articles, my peers' respective authors used plenty of ethos strategies, even over logos. I think that this is due to the fact that organization and effective transitions are used in almost all articles. However, in order to make an argument effective, we need to include expert opinions and references like that. Also, I feel that like my peers, my post did pretty well at describing what strategies my author used.