COMM2281 · Communication

Critical Challenges: AI in an Evolving Crisis

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

This course may be used to satisfy one of four required elective courses within the Communication major. Artificial Intelligence (AI) lends itself to a multidisciplinary investigation of communication, media, and human ingenuity, freighted with philosophical questions about the meaning of life as it is impacted by technologies whose processes surpass human cognitive capacities. The investigation incorporates communication theory and social theory and practice as techno-social formations in a dynamic relationship. Key questions emerge from the rise of AI in public as a disruptive force driving the use of digital technologies. How should we respond to the rise of AI in everyday life when it has the capacity to overtake human decision-making and cognition? How to manage it in universities and professional life? At a more practical level, how should professors and students address the emergence of the AI language model known as ChatGPT? These and other questions are located in this course within the history of debates and fears about AI. Students will be invited to write short commentary pieces and occasional essays that reflectively and critically explore AI, as well as engage with each other using expressions of humanistic performance.