Linguistics Colloquium Series: On Conscientização: Paulo Freire, Artificial Intelligence, and the Re-linquishment of Agency

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The Linguistics Department of Ohio University presents Dr. Joseph Pecorelli discussing: "On Conscientização: Paulo Freire, Artificial Intelligence, and the Re-linquishment of Agency" via Teams. Join the meeting here

Abstract: In the midst of the proposed Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab 2017), educators find themselves contending with artificial intelligence and AI-based technologies designed to perform tasks that traditionally require human cognition and intelligence. The advent of AI has proven particularly problematic for humanist educators, as they have discovered that students, spurred by the political right’s attacks on the relevance of the humanities, have utilized Gen-AI apparatuses to complete their coursework in languages, literatures, and the social sciences. In doing so, they have caused and will continue to cause irreparable damage to their empathy and emotional maturation, as well as their abilities to problem solve creatively and think critically. In the present article, I explore how theories by Paulo Freire assist us in reasserting the value of the humanist educator, as well as impede the abstraction that AI has caused with respect to humankind’s conscientization and relationship to the human and more-than-human world.

Dr. Joseph Pecorelli is Associate Professor of Portuguese and Spanish at the University of North Georgia and an alumnus of the Ohio University MA Applied Linguistics program.