Do Chatbots Dream of Data Streams? Play, Creativity, Personhood, and Generative AI in Engineering Communication

This Brief Paper discusses emerging trends from an ongoing study of how undergraduate engineering students at a midwest R1 university engage with Generative AI (GenAI) technologies and how these interactions influence their creative and ethical approaches to engineering work. Using survey data and interviews from fourteen students, initial findings reveal that students often began using GenAI experimentally, with the goals of having fun and testing its capabilities. In doing so, they unintentionally engage in the engineering practice of finding problems in need of solutions. This paper further examines students' ethical concerns related to authorship, accountability, and the ownership of ideas generated by GenAI. Although a human-in-the-loop approach is prevalent, where students critically incorporate GenAI into their learning, writing, and engineering practices, concerns around over-reliance and the ethical implications of GenAI's lack of personhood complicate their relationships with GenAI. This paper underscores the need for further exploration of ethics and creativity in GenAI use, as these novice engineers navigate the evolving network of technology in engineering education.