32 ACUMEN • SPRING 2024 DOUGLAS BENEDICT “So, it’s interesting discussing all of these ethical questions, knowing that our students will attack them from different angles, as users as well as makers,” Gabel said. “What are the ethics around it? What are the possibilities? And how do you develop a practice of interfacing with these new tools as they come out?” Gabel said there are three primary ethical concerns that they’ve explored in class so far. One is the nature of creativity itself and what it means that AI is using other people’s work and then adapting it. The second concern is the impact of AI on the planet—will it solve our environmental issues, or is it creating new ones? “The other big one is, how does AI replicate, reinforce or disrupt existing biases and systems of oppression that are in our world?” Gabel said. “How is AI reflecting back to us our society’s racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.? Is it possible to use AI to break that, or do we need to change something about our world before AI can change its mind?” One of the texts Lowry and Gabel use in the course to put these questions into context is More Than a Glitch by Meredith Broussard. “She talks a lot about how this stuff is built in and then the possibilities for it,” Gabel said, “because some of our students will be the people who will use it, and some of our students will be the people who might try to fix it.” AI into the Classroom Lowry and Gabel are already excited about the potential for teaching it again. And since they have developed it together, either one could offer it in the future, as another first-year seminar or as a regular part of their theatre studies curriculum. “We’re very excited about the enthusiasm about the course and the affirmation of what we’re trying to explore,” Lowry said. “And though these students might not take another course that’s specifically about AI, they will be interfacing with it in some way in their lives, as students and then also as professionals in an art field or outside of it.” ● “ This is a field that’s moving rapidly, so our own experimentation is helping collaboratively figure out where we can explore and push students to engage in new things with minimal scaffolding.” – WILL LOWRY Lyam Gabel Will Lowry
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