On Thursday, February 29, the COM Research Colloquium Series (CRC) presented “The Tangled Triangle: AI, Education, and Democracy” by College of Communication Professor James E. Katz of Emerging Media Studies. The seminar was part of an ongoing series by the CRC, highlighting emerging trends and aspects of communication landscapes. Previous talks have focused on “Netwar: Warfare on the Web,” “The Mourning Show: The Televisuality of an Industry Death Ritual,” and “Platforms as Rulemakers for Interpersonal Communication: The Case of the Screenshot Feature.”
Professor Katz’s talk emphasized the growing role and importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in both education and democracy. “My approach will be with broad brush strokes,” Katz said, beginning the talk. Before delving into the impacts of AI, Katz built a basis for understanding democracy and political control. From this definition, Katz emphasized that AI can lead to what may appear to be a democracy but truly is not. Katz addressed the common negative vision of AI developing to control and replace workers in a dystopian sense, tying in “concerns echoed in the recent Hollywood writers strike.” The talk transitioned to AI’s potential impact on human creativity, destructive ability, and philosophical justification.
Shifting to an education focus, Katz touched on the role of ChatGPT and other large language models, saying, “These are not truth machines,” and “they’re only reflective of the training data.” Katz stated that though these uses of AI may have a few benefits for students, the overall result of their use in education is short-circuiting learning and not forcing students to think on their own. Specifically, Katz spoke on the self-enrichment a student gains from efforts to get to an answer. The ethical compromises advancing technology creates “calls into question the purpose of education,” said Katz.
Katz posed a hypothetical question to the audience. He asked, “if you had received a beautifully written letter from someone, which AI had created, would you be pleased with it?” Katz argued that even if the individual giving the letter had picked that specific option out of many created by AI, the emotional meaning behind the letter and its message is not nearly as authentic as one written by the person themselves. This human-created sincerity is one of the costs of supplementing AI as a tool of creation.
Given these challenges, Katz believes that “AI has the potential to revolutionize schoolroom processes.” Well-intentioned use could still create negative effects and may “become an instrument of domination and micro-control,” said Katz. A large concern, Katz says, is the power for AI to limit information and define truth.
Katz also acknowledges the potential positive side of AI’s impact on education. “It is my belief that AI can help people who have been disadvantaged by the education system,” said Katz. Challenging the “luxury” of higher education, Katz referenced students of lower socioeconomic status achieving lower performance who would benefit from increased access to resources such as AI.
Ending his talk with a Q&A session, Katz was asked about where the responsibility for regulating AI should lie. “Transparency, parental involvement, legal responsibility … My view is that these companies should be held legally responsible and criminally responsible in extreme cases,” Katz replied. Katz was then asked how people may help bring those in a historically disadvantaged place to a better socioeconomic position, within the context of AI. This is the “real promise of AI,” said Katz.
As a media scholar, Katz’s work has received over 17,000 Google Scholar citations as well as international recognition for his research. The following CRC presentation occurred on March 21, titled “Building Representation for Kids and Their Families: Theory and Practice” by Dr. Annemarie McClain, an assistant professor of Media Science.
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