Project 2 Outline

This post will showcase the outline of my rhetorical analysis of my article. To start, I will show what parts of the "Sections of the Paper" reading I found most helpful and what I incorporated into my actual outline.

Regan, Caitlin. "Writing." 09/03/2008 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

First, what I found helpful was that within the introduction section, the text mentions that this essay should be about the writing itself instead of the general ideas around it. This helps because I had assumed that we were to also shed some light on the issue itself, but now I know that emphasis should be on what the author writes in the article. Also, the fact that it states details about how the thesis should be helped me to realize the importance of having a thesis that can be supported. I also feel that the way the text explains how to develop the body paragraphs is very helpful, as it is easy to follow. Finally, the conclusion section also re-instilled the importance of leaving the audience with something to think about, not just simply restating the purpose of the essay. I chose to do this within my own text by discussing how it will continue to have an impact on those who read it, since this is such a relevant and recent topic.

Outline      

Introduction:  

• Thesis
• In the article "Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence", Ben Medlock uses his status as co-founder and CTO of Swiftkey to convince his audience that artificial intelligence is not to be feared. To keep his credibility, Medlock keeps his professional tone constant and has many statistics available within his article. 
• Background info/context 
• Who Ben Medlock is
• Credentials
• What he has done
• What he is going to do in the future
• Reasons why he wrote this article     

Body paragraphs:

• Body Paragraph 1: 
• Discuss his formal tone
• Why keeping a formal tone helps one's credibility and why he uses it in this instance
• Formal tone shows audience level-headedness, even if it is very biased
• Professional usually means trustworthy 
• Wants to keep his credibility so that people will trust his opinion
• Examples:
• "AI has the power to transform people’s lives."
• "AI is all around us. Let’s make sure we get the best out of it now and in the years to come."
• "I"
• How these examples show his tone

• Body Paragraph 2: 
• Discuss his statistics and examples shown within the article
• Why he uses this strategy
• Even availability shows credibility
• Shows experience with AI
• All good statistics/examples
• Appeals to emotion and credibility
• Examples
• "This sense of optimism goes as far back as Turing, who believed we would have truly intelligent computers by the close of the 20th century."
• Stephen Hawking-Emotional 
• "SwiftKey’s AI algorithms analysed thousands of words from his writing, roughly doubling his speech rate."
• " 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. "
• Body Paragraph 3:
• Discuss why he mentions his own company
• Shows good AI has done, but also what good he has done
• Shows first-hand experience with AI= credibility
• Examples
• "We integrated our technology into..."
• "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."
• Body Paragraph 4:
• Does not discredit other side of this argument, in fact, he knows that AI will one day gain human-level intelligence
• Why?
• Helps not only with tone, but keeps a sense of trustworthiness 
• Examples:
• "At the very least I believe we are decades away from intelligence that is anywhere near humanity’s. If we take the risks seriously, that should give us plenty of time to prepare."
• "...we are a long way off it attaining the general intelligence of the human brain"
•  "There are debates to be had about the ultimate objectives of AI research and potential risks..."
• Conclusion: 
• Overall, he uses himself and his status has support for his argument
• Tone is very important
• We should keep this in mind as we read other articles with this same strategy. Can we honestly trust them because of their status or are they manipulating their facts? 

Reflection: 

After reading Tom and Ann Emilie's outlines, I realized that there are many different ways to analyze an article, especially since there are so many different topics to discuss. For example, in Ann Emilie's outline she focuses specifically on her author's audience, which is something I had a difficult time trying to place into my essay. I also realized that, after reading Tom's post, thinking about the smaller claims within my paragraphs may make it easier to draft afterward.