Lean into It
Last week a colleague and I were invited to visit our colleagues in Dumfries, for their Learning, Teaching and Scholarship day. I have yet to process all the interesting work and ideas from that day.
So beginning to write up the one that stirred the most conversation and debate.
A colleague proposed that we have to lean into AI, and I agree. Yet, it made me wonder about the positionality of AI in my own work, and my positionality to it.
The third person in a dialogue
Enter kitchen conversation:
We are having a problem with the dishwasher:
Wednesday afternoon, I just had cycled back from work, on entering the kitchen, the OH says: ‘So I asked Bard and the problem with the dishwasher could be … ‘
As he proceeds to tell me about the problem, I zone out trying to remember: ‘Have forgotten that we have a friend called Bard?’
Spoiler alert: I didn’t.
The Google AI Experiment Bard has so quickly become part of daily activity, that OH treated it like the third person in the dialogue. *
So this is where my thinking is right now. AI is the third person in the dialogue. I am wondering if Vicki and I ought to adapt our framework and add AI as another actor in the Venn diagram.
Where are you with your thinking on this right now?
Image on the left showing lush rolling fields, framed by trees, image to the right shows a blooming palm tree. So yes, the Dumfries campus is gorgeous!
*and of course I immediately relate this to the phrase I first encountered in Terry Pratchett’s books: anthropomorphic personification and have a nerd moment