Annette Vee on AI-Aware Teaching

The words and metaphors we choose to describe our interactions with artificial intelligence are telling.

Do we view it as a stochastic parrot? A thought partner? A form of co-intelligence? A sycophantic assistant? Each of these phrases reflects a different set of beliefs and attitudes and likely shapes our engagement with AI.

How instructors talk about the technology’s relationship to their teaching goals can be just as revealing. To say we want students to develop AI fluency, for example, means we expect sustained engagement with it. Labelling a course or an assignment as AI-resistant suggests a different orientation.

But what do we lose when the conversation becomes a strict either/or proposition?

Annette Vee is one of the authors of The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, a new book that presents another way to frame our relationship with AI as educators. She talks with us about all things AI and college teaching and why she believes the concept of AI awareness can make space for a wide spectrum of views and practices.

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