Academic Writing · Harvard EXPO 15
AI — The Next Public Health Crisis?
An op-ed arguing that chatbots should be regulated by an independent body, written for Harvard's EXPO 15 — Fundamentals of Academic Writing.
About this paper
This op-ed was written for EXPO 15: Fundamentals of Academic Writing at Harvard, a course devoted to the mechanics of academic argument: formulating a defensible thesis, marshaling evidence, anticipating counterarguments, and revising through successive drafts and peer workshops. The op-ed form demands the same rigor as a scholarly essay while imposing the additional disciplines of brevity, urgency, and a public audience.
Drawing on my experience as an AI practitioner, the essay argues that chatbots should be regulated by an independent body: their behavior depends on hidden variables — training data, prompt templates, reward models — that users cannot inspect, and self-policing by their builders has already proven insufficient. The essay develops the argument by analogy with other once-unregulated industries, explains in accessible terms how in-context learning and reinforcement learning from human feedback shape chatbot behavior, and closes with a call for independent pre-release testing akin to clinical trials.
Excerpt
Our regulatory bodies test every new drug, crash test every new car model and certify every aircraft before we deem them safe for use. Isn’t it time Generative AI face similar scrutiny? Chatbots are undeniably dazzling feats of innovation yet are released in the wild with no guarantee beyond their creators’ assurances.
Full paper
The complete essay — including the rhetorical situation and logical outline developed as part of the assignment — is available as a PDF.