Revised Conclusion

In this post, like the previous one, I will be revising another one of the components of my paper. However this time, it will be the conclusion that will be presented.

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Old Conclusion:
Overall, Medlock effectively uses these rhetorical strategies because he presents himself as a credible source, both from his tone and his actual experience in the field, and he presents relevant statistics. After reading this article, the next time AI or robotics are mentioned, the good things that SwiftKey has done will be brought to mind. Not only this, but the hopefulness within Medlock’s voice will make the audience associate AI technology with innovation and life improvement. Whether this was done for a world benefit or simply the benefit of his company, one thing is clear. The way that an author presents his or herself has a huge impact on the effectiveness of their argument. 

New Conclusion:
Medlock definitely makes it difficult for a reader not to trust his word. By presenting himself and his statistics in a professional tone, the reader is inclined to believe what he says simply because of his experience in the field. The rhetoric found within his article can help us to think about other articles that are done by big names in society. Typically, they have enough of a reputation that only at the mentioning of their name is enough to convince some readers, which is why Medlock's article was so effective. In the future, these texts that are written by such a famous source should not be looked at superficially, but we should truly analyze what they are saying to be sure if they can truly be believed or not.

I feel that my new conclusion is better because it makes more sense with the thesis of my paper as a whole. Also, I feel that it has a final point that leaves the readers with something to think about. Also, after reading the assigned tips and strategies box in Student's Guide, I decided to follow the "Answer the 'So What?'" approach as the audience needs to understand why rhetorical analysis is important.

Revised Introduction

For this post I will share my new and improved introduction along with my old introduction.

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Old Introduction: 
"Today, we are in an age of technological innovation. Technology consumes our lives, whether it be through social media, television or even simply the transportation we use daily. However, what if this technology were to take over our lives in a more literal sense? This fear of losing our place as the top organism increases as science moves closer to producing a robot with human-like intelligence. Ben Medlock, however, argues that the good that can come from this “artificial intelligence” outweighs the possibilities of our fears coming true. In his article “Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence”, he uses his status as CTO and co-founder of SwiftKey, an organization that produces AI, to effectively convince his audience that AI is not to be feared, along with presenting his own statistics and keeping his professional tone consistent."

New Introduction:
"Today, we are in an age of technological innovation. Technology consumes our lives, whether it be through social media, television or even simply the transportation we use daily. However, what if this technology were to take over our lives in a more literal sense? This fear of losing our place as the top organism increases as science moves closer to producing a robot with human-like intelligence. Ben Medlock, however, argues that the good that can come from this “artificial intelligence” outweighs the possibilities of our fears coming true. This paper will explore the rhetorical strategies present in his article “Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence” so that we may learn how to better analyze other articles. In this article, Medlock uses his status as CTO and co-founder of SwiftKey to effectively convince his audience that AI is not to be feared, along with presenting his own statistics and keeping a formal tone. "

I believe that the new introduction is better because it introduces my points by explicitly forecasting them, which is better for the purpose of this essay. I also referenced the audience in my new introduction and mentioned why we are rhetorically analyzing this article (so that we may get better at rhetorically analyzing other articles in the future). I also noted that I should probably take the explanation as to what SwiftKey is because I don't want to have too much information in my introduction and that is explained later in my essay.

Reflection on Project 2 Draft

In this post I will reflect on my own rhetorical analysis draft. However, I will be taking into account what I have learned about my own writing by reading Clay and Mark's drafts.

Mogg, Rakel Leah. "Single White Rose and Reflection" 03/24/10 via Flickr.
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Thesis:

In my draft, I had an identifiable thesis and did describe what I was going to be talking about. However, it was suggested that I split my thesis into two sentences so that I could be more specific about my points.

Organization:

I feel like my organization was relatively good throughout my draft. I definitely split up my topics into specific areas and had endings to each topic that the reader could identify. My reviewer suggested that I find ways to talk about how ethos and pathos work together instead of separating them. For my draft, I decided to split each strategy that my author used into its own paragraph, including its examples and explanations.

Identifying the elements of rhetorical situation:

Honestly, I don't think that I did. I did identify the audience and date of the article ,I did not talk about why these were important and did not discuss the other three elements. As I go back to revise my paper, I will include these elements and keep in mind why they are important to rhetorical analysis. 

Rhetorical Strategies:

I did illustrate how my authors used their rhetorical strategies, but now I feel that I did not effectively explain why. I did make an attempt, but it could definitely be better.I also tried to discuss how these strategies affected the audience, but I feel like I also have a lot of revising to do. I identified how they affect the audience, but not in detail, and I should explain why.

Evidence:

I think I did a good job of including evidence in my draft. I introduced each direct quote and tried to keep the natural flow of the paragraph. Also, my peers noted that I did a good job of incorporating brackets and ellipses in each direct quote. I also think that I did explain why they are relevant to the strategies that I reference in my essay.

Conclusion:

I have always struggled with conclusions. So, I feel that I definitely tried to answer the "so what" question, but, I should go back and change it until it flows well and truly answers the question. I did introduce a bigger picture within my conclusion, so depending on the readers' interests, they could possibly want more after reading my essay. 

Punctuation, Part 1

In this post, I will be describing three topics that I read about in Rules for Writers about Punctuation. The referenced sections will be about what I believe that I can improve on within my own writing.

Varlan, Horian. "Punctuation marks made of puzzle pieces" 10/23/08 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

1. Unnecessary commas-
• After reading this section, I have realized that a comma is not just a way to include a pause in your writing. What I have noticed was that I have a tendency to use a common incorrectly in a series and I also use a common to set off a concluding adverb clause. Not only this, but I also have a habit of using commas after a coordinating conjunction. I don't know how I obtained these habits, but I can only assume that it is because I am trying to follow the natural flow of reading with pauses included. 
2. The colon-
• I have never known how to actually use a colon, so I usually just never include them. However, I now realize that it can really improve my writing, especially because of my style. I know now that a colon can be used before a list or a appositive, which I use fairly often. From now own, I will try to practice more with the colon.
3. The dash-
• I've always like the look of the dash inside of a text, but I have never known how to use it. After reading this section, I realize that it can be used to place emphasis, and to introduce things such as a list, restatement or a dramatic shift in tone. I have a habit of using a comma to set off an appositive, but now I know that instead of using a comma, a dash can be used for the same thing! 

Reflection:

I reviewed both Mark and Clay's drafts of their Rhetorical Analyses. I definitely learned a lot about punctuation while looking them over. In Mark's draft, I noticed that he too had unnecessary commas in his draft just like I did. For example:
" By intimating this nuanced outlook on the GOP’s internal politicking, Bouie helps readers begin to understand his vision for what is happening within the Republican Party, and also helps slowly build into his implications..."

I feel that taking either of the commas out would be better. 

In Clay's draft, I saw that he used the colon effectively, so this helps me by giving me a reference of how to use it in my own writing. In his article was this quote:

" What makes his use of statistics especially powerful is that he includes three different types: shocking, evidential and minor."

Draft of Rhetorical Analysis

This post will present my first draft of my rhetorical analysis.

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To my peer reviewers:

Once again, thank you for taking the time to look over my paper! As you read through this, I would like you to look at the organization of my thoughts and if there is enough analysis within my essay. For some reason, my mind was spacing on how to best present my thoughts, and if there were even enough thoughts presented. So, bear with me! I know this is will probably be hard to read right now, but I will try my best to make it better! Any feedback other than what was already mentioned would be greatly appreciated as well. 

You can find the draft of my essay here!

Practicing Paraphrasing and Summarizing

In this post, I will be doing an exercise to practice paraphrasing and summarizing long quotes. I will be referencing a quote from my chosen article for this project.

Park, Adrian. "Inkwell icon" 09/26/2013 via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution 3.0 Unported license. 

Original Source:

"While our AI approaches are showing tremendous progress, we are a long way off it attaining the general intelligence of the human brain. 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. The human brain integrates data from a vast diversity of sources, and it’s also likely that we will need to figure out how to embed AI systems in the real world in meaningful ways to allow them to build realistic models that capture the complexity of nature and human interaction. 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."

My Paraphrase of Original Source:

Ben Medlock presents the essence of his argument in "Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence" by stating that artificial intelligence technology is years away from even being close to being considered on par with human intelligence. At its current state today, it can't compete with the human brain as it does not have the ability to gain information from the outside world, but only what it is told. Since we are so far away from having human-like computers, we will be able to adapt and create a plan for such technology as we continue to innovate and progress, and the risks won't be an issue anymore.

My Summary of the Original Source:

In "Fear must not hold back new era of artificial intelligence", Ben Medlock states that AI technology won't have human intelligence for many years and during the time it takes to innovate a human-like computer, scientists will be prepared for any risks they come across.

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.