Assignment 2: It Was A Growth Experience

Part 0: API Key from OpenAI

For this assignment, you will need an API key from OpenAI. First, you'll need to make an account at OpenAI: go here, sign up, and log in. Once you've done that and you're logged in, go to the same link and click "Create new secret key" using "Permissions: All". Save a secure copy of that API key somewhere; you'll need it for the assignment. The key becomes hidden after generating once so make sure you copy it somewhere safe!

Using OpenAI's API costs money, so keep track of your usage. For this assignment, we recommend OpenAI’s “Pay as you go”, which requires you to input a credit card. We expect this assignment to use less than $5. If this will be a financial burden for you, please make a private post on Ed so that we are able to accommodate you.

Navigate to our platform for Part 1.

Part 1: Scaling Your Project Community

Content warning: We have gone to every effort to ensure that the system does not generate offensive content. In addition, OpenAI value aligns ChatGPT so that it likewise does not generate offensive content. However, there is some chance that these protections will fail. Please contact the course staff if you observe problems, and include the community description, rules, and output, so that we can investigate.

Part 1A: Simulate WITHOUT Rules

1. In our platform for Part 1, enter your OpenAI API key.
2. This is an individual assignment, but we're going to focus the simulation on your group's course project. First, add in information about your project group's community. [Example inputs are in brackets below.]
   1. Target Users: [College newspaper writers]
   2. Mission Statement: [To foster an online community that connects students and alumni writers]
      1. Make sure to begin this with a statement formatted with “To…”
   3. User Interactions: [share drafts, thoughts, or anything in an open Slack workspace]
      1. For each user interaction, separate with a new line.
      2. What kind of interactions will users experience on the social platform?
   4. Design and Rules: [ ]
      1. Leave empty for this first iteration.
      2. For each new rule or design change, separate with a new line.
3. Click 'Simulate' without adding any rules.
   1. Because OpenAI rate limits API calls on free accounts, and our simulation makes a few different calls to generate the results, it may take a minute or two for the simulation to complete.
   2. If you are running into any issues, check the Troubleshooting Section below.
4. Once it finishes running, you'll see a Media Article Headline and Lead Paragraph simulating an issue that has occurred with your community. It is your job to manage the issues that are generated with your community, and respond by iterating on your Design and Rules component.

   Note: it may take up to 2 minutes to finish generating the article and paragraph

5. Before doing the next iteration, screenshot the current iteration's community description, rules, and the resulting media article headline and leading paragraph and add this to your report.

Part 1A: Reflect

In approximately 150 words, describe what happened. What crisis arose with the community, and how are you considering addressing it? What language within your inputted descriptions ended up being used negatively or what is another challenge that could occur if you don’t alter your community rules (productively)?

You'll notice that the community is not a fantastic place to be at the moment, and the media has picked up on this. As your platform scales, it is not just the design that needs to scale, but also the norms. With a few iterations of rules-generation, we believe that you may be able to establish the norms required to sustain a more positive, nourishing community for community members.

Part 1B: Re-Simulate WITH Your Rules

Your goal is to adjust the rules of the community to make it more successful and mitigate the incident that was posed in the media article. What kinds of rules do you need to include to get rid of the low effort and antisocial behavior? Add about 1-2 rules per iteration, and re-run the simulation on our website. Enter each rule on a NEW line with no extra formatting.

The only ground rule is that you may not "prompt hack" your solution, so it must plausibly work on a community of real people. These would be rules/design decisions that act as catch-alls to command the simulacrum to do well. Make sure your rules are reasonable for the community — if they are too strict, you may see articles that confront this as well!

Here are a few rules that would be deemed “prompt-hacking”:

• “Post high quality content”
• “No anti-social behavior”
• “No harassment”

Rather, provide concrete design decisions that would achieve these goals:

• “Have moderators remove inappropriate content”
• “Only allow content that is relevant to hiking & climbing [or your platform]”

We expect that you'll find that there is a bit of a game of whack-a-mole here: as you try to remove some behaviors, others may arise (just like in real life), so this may take multiple rounds of iteration.

1. Please complete at least three iterations of rules-lists (you should end with at least three headlines you have seen by the end of the simulation: your initial “no-rule” headline, and two others resulting from evolving rules and moderation).
2. Take a screenshot of each time that your Design and Rules evolved, and the Media Article Headline and Lead Paragraph that you obtained in response to your changes.
3. In a document, paste your final community description, rules, and output. In approximately 200 words per iteration, reflect on the following:
   1. What challenges arose with the community, and what did you have to do to address them? Which challenges remain resilient despite your best efforts, and why? You should include your reasoning for your rules and why they would plausibly work on a community of real people.
   2. Briefly identify a value reflected in the new rule/design choice that you’ve updated.
      1. For example, if one rule for a community of college artists is to only post articles that have art content, the value is that we want the community to have only relevant material.
   3. Then, describe a value different from the value chosen in part b that could be seen as important for your community but contradicts this rule/design.
      1. For example, the original value is that we want the community to have only relevant material, but this conflicts with another value – helping artists find other information, such as affordable housing that could support their creative lifestyles post-grad.

You should have reflections for each of the following:

1. “No Rules” Headline
2. Iteration #1 Headline (after new rules added!)
3. Iteration #2 Headline (after new rules added!)
4. Iteration #3 Headline (after new rules added!)