7. Academic Automation, Machine Un/Learning and Artificial Non/Intelligence
Over the last 70 years, computational and networked media have become deeply integrated with higher education and have slowly adopted and integrated various technologies. The newest generation of technologies engaging higher education centers around what is popularly called artificial intelligence, otherwise known as machine learning. Machine learning creates models that, in part self-design solutions that may include interaction, prediction, and other simulatable aspects. This panel invites papers that engage with questions of academic automation, machine un/learning, and artificial non/intelligence in the academic context. It seeks critical papers that examine questions around automatic grading, artificial teaching assistants, robotic instructors, other academic technologies, and the transformation of the student and professor roles concerning these technologies.
This panel also seeks papers that engage these technologies in other academic roles, such as research or service as work. How are these technologies mediating different academic functions? Who benefits from these technologies? And who is privileged by them?
We have to consider the roles of craft, artistry, and humanity in those roles. Is there an argument to be made for automation in the academy? Is there an argument to be made for AI/Machine learning in the academy? What kind of relations do these establish? Following Ivan Illich, should we be rethinking our relations to develop tools and systems that treat us as human, perhaps even more human than our current system? Following Virilio, what will be their accident? What are the good relations between our academic institutions, their people, and these new technologies?
Contact:jhuns@vt.edu Keywords: academic automation, AI in the academy, new academic technologies,
