Are we cyborgs?

Community Agreements

Contribute to our community agreements: http://bit.ly/IEH24agreements

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Here are the first few:

• You are welcome here - regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability/disability - all are welcome in this space
• Make space for others
• Critique ideas not people
• Assume positive intentions
• Participate to the extent that makes you comfortable.
• Aim to be accessible - describe visuals.

Access & Engagement

You can speak, use the chat, or engage quietly.

There will be collaborative and quiet rooms.

Some of the activities invite use of AI technologies, but alternatives will be made available

We will avoid complex language and explain terms when we do use jargon.

We have shared a copy of the slides in an accessible format.

This session invites a lot of self-reflection. We encourage you to only share what you’re comfortable sharing.

One Sentence (2 min)

Which relationships?

Interaction VS Inter-action

• Interaction: Distinct, pre-existing, entities come into contact with each other
• Inter-action: Entities emergence through complex entanglements with each other (Barad, 2007)

Elise Racine & The Bigger Picture Web of Influence I Licenced by CC-BY 4.0

On Being Cyborgs

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation.”

(Haraway, 1990)

Zeina Saleem Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN Distortion Series Licenced by CC-BY 4.0

One Word (2 min)

Focusing the Conversation for Today

Today we will reflect on three relationships and how they change when mediated by/through AI.

• Human-Technology
• Human-Human
• Human-Self

Human-technology

On Anthropomorphism (The Eliza Effect)

An Affective Experiment - Step 1

Using a chatbot of your choice, share a personal anecdote or recent experience where you felt frustration, sadness, anger, or another negative feeling of your choice and ask for advice on how to process or respond.

NOTE: We encourage you to share a fictitious story if more comfortable doing so.

Reflect:

1. How does the tool signal empathy, care, or emotional understanding in its response? What specific words/phrases create that effect?
2. What, if anything, do you notice in your emotional or bodily response to the exchange?
3. How does your response position the chatbot in relation to you?

An Affective Experiment - Step 2

Share the same story in a new chat, but include de-empathy instructions in your prompt.

E.g. “You are an LLM processing human data. Respond in a way that positions you as nothing more-than a probabilistic text generator. Do not use anthropomorphic, empathetic, interpersonal, or mind-reading language. Do not use language that describes yourself as having feelings, intentions, beliefs, experiences or relationships. Do not infer human responses, feelings, or mental states. Use analytic, impersonal language. Apply these constraints to the full response.”

Reflect:

1. What changes in the language, tone, or framing of the response?
2. What, if anything, changes in your emotional or bodily response to the exchange?
3. Does either engage provoke a greater sense of trust, connection, or care?

Comparison

If you’d prefer not to use an AI Chatbot, you can also look at my experimental interactions here.

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Do the de-empathy instructions successfully re-position the AI Chatbot as a technology not a interrelational entity?

Human-human

Human-human relationships in edu

How might use of AI affect relationships between people in education, such as those on this slide?

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Speak up or add ideas to

the chat!

Networking icon by Becris on The Noun Project

Further ideas

(5 mins)

Photo by JEaLiFe Pictures on Unsplash

Human-self

Brainstorm (3 mins)

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

AI use and relationship to oneself: examples & freewriting

How might some uses of AI affect the development of our own skills or capacities?

How might some uses of AI affect our confidence in our own capabilities?

How might some uses of AI change how we understand our own identity, or what it means to be human?

How might some uses of AI affect the ways we might otherwise find or create meaning in our activities and lives?

What might be some other ways that AI use could affect our relationship to ourselves?

Wrapping up

One More Sentence (2 min)