In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), students, educators, and researchers are eager to learn, assist, and understand the societal implications of quickly developing technologies.
Communication Arts has been taking an interdisciplinary approach to AI to include perspectives from both the social sciences and humanities. In recent semesters, some faculty have started involving AI in classroom assignments and discussions, and researchers have begun studying the various effects of AI in lab experiments.
In Fall 2024, Communication Arts introduced a new “Communication in the Age of AI” course for undergraduate students that explores the rapidly evolving scope of AI and its role in different communication contexts. Students are discovering how AI is currently used in industries like education and healthcare while also critiquing the ethical concerns that have emerged as these platforms gain popularity.
Students engage in discussion each week to understand the impacts of AI technologies in multifaceted ways. Visiting Assistant Professor Juhyung Sun asks students to consider questions like “could this AI replace a teacher” or “who is responsible when AI makes some kind of mistake?”
Students also partake in a “Conversations with AI” group project. “I ask them to compare two different AI tools, one based on voice AI, like Siri, and one text-based tool, like ChatGPT or Replika,” Sun said.
Having students more consciously interact with AI tools allows them to think more critically about the ways these technologies work and how they can both help and hinder different populations and industries.
In addition to this new course, the Communication Science area of the department is completing multiple studies revolving around AI. Professor Catalina Toma and her colleagues are working to understand how people feel toward chatbots depending on the input of positive or negative messaging or the effects of algorithmic feedback on online dater’s self-perceptions.
Jeremy Morris, a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in Communication Arts, is also exploring ways to involve AI in the classroom. In his course, “Critical Internet Students engaging in Sun’s course materials Studies,” Morris’s goal is to introduce students to the technology they will interact with in their daily lives.
“The semester after ChatGPT became popular, I figured out a way to include it in my big project for the internet class. Students use ChatGPT to create a song about one of the course topics, and then they critique what the output is,” Morris said.
As part of an AI research workgroup on campus, Morris also highlighted the approach that humanities scholarship is taking when it comes to understanding AI. “The Humanities perspective is trying to focus us back on issues of power, issues of appropriation, issues of how these new technologies impact marginalized communities.”
Educators and researchers are watching how society will continue to change in response to new AI tools. While AI is not a new technology, its prevalence in society is on the rise, and the Communication Arts departmentis continuing to find ways