(Posthuman) ABCs of [Artificial] Alternative Intelligence(s) and Implications for Social Studies Education (Poster 7)

• In Event: AI in Social Studies Education: Tools for Thoughtful Practice With Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

In the program L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet engages philosopher Gilles Deleuze through the conceptual contributions of his life. Framed as an “ABC” mapping of the French philosopher’s way of (mis)understanding the more-than-human world (and beyond) around him, Deleuze and Parnet traverse everything from A-nimal to D-esire to, of course, Z-ig-zag across multiple figurations of embodied thought and emergent becomings. While Deleuze’s philosophy is notably complex, there is a childlike (and, we think, more accessible) quality to the “ABCs” and an alphabet-based form of scholarship—indeed fitting for a philosopher who indexed countless perspectives and organs meant to untether traditional patterns of knowledge. In this presentation, we seek a similarly generative framing to map out—through an alphabetization—where/how AIs reveal themselves and what these intensities (might) mean for social studies education. For as Crawford (2021) puts it, “mining is where we see the extractive politics of AI at their most literal” (p. 15). Within the register of each letter, we plan to introduce the concept before expounding upon the idea’s entangled relationship to social studies to help educators and students continue to think about the imbricated nature of how AIs and social studies contribute to various ways in which the more-than-human world is made, unmade, and remade. What we hope to illustrate, among other things, is the rhizomatic and material nature of AIs and how/why these embodied logics demand our attention.

Authors

• Erin Adams, Kennesaw State University

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico