Skepticism and Boycotting: An Analysis of How Students Resist and Refuse AI in Education

• In Event: Tinkering With/Tripping It Up: Youth Shift, Interrupt, and Challenge Conceptualizations Around Their AI Use.

Abstract

Purpose
As artificial intelligence’s costs to people and our planet become clear, education scholars are raising the importance of resisting AI in education (Williamson, 2024). Our study draws on two educational settings that support students as philosophers of technology (Author 2) as they investigate the ethical complexities of AI. The emerging findings can guide the design of learning experiences that cultivate students’ resistance of AI.

Perspectives
Sociotechnical imaginaries are narratives that structure society through maintaining preferred versions of the future that are made possible by science and technology (Jasanoff, 2015). The AI imaginary is a type of sociotechnical imaginary that aligns with powerful actors and their stories of an inevitable AI-first future.
Our study examines how students resist and refuse the AI imaginary. Youth have long engaged in resistance to transform unjust education systems (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001). Notably, resistance exists alongside accommodation, or how an individual aligns with a society’s dominant narratives (Rogers & Way, 2021). Thus, resistance consists of a “heterogeneity of orientations” (Turiel, 2003, p. 127). The study clarifies how students demonstrate diverse orientations of resistance towards the AI imaginary by asking:
In what ways do students resist and refuse the AI imaginary?
What pedagogical tools and practices help students develop their resistance to and refusal of the AI imaginary?

Context and Methods
The study occurs in three phases. Phase I (Fall 2023) and Phase III (Fall 2024) focus on an undergraduate course in a Midwestern private university’s school of education. Phase II (Summer 2024) focuses on a six-week program for 11 high school students in a Midwestern city. Phase I’s data include artifacts produced by the researchers and 34 undergraduate students. Phase II’s and Phase III’s data include jottings and memos, student and researcher-produced artifacts, and transcripts from semi-structured interviews with students. To achieve a detailed understanding of students’ resistance, we used deductive and inductive coding (Miles et al., 2018) to identify how students position themselves in relation to the AI imaginary.

Results and Significance
Students’ most common form of resistance (n=17) was voicing skepticism about technology companies’ claims that their products will “revolutionize” or otherwise upend education. Several students (n=6) called for narrow applications of AI in education, while still taking a skeptical orientation by asking, in the words of one high school student, “whether it’s worth introducing AI or not.” Outright refusal was rare; in two cases, university students refused to use ChatGPT after learning about its harms, with one claiming the identity of a ChatGPT “boycotter.” Early analysis indicates auditing an AI tool by examining different dimensions (e.g., data security and privacy; labor; and environment) supported students’ nascent resistance.
Resisting the AI imaginary can help youth develop personal narratives about who and how they want to be with AI. Our study suggests researchers and practitioners assist students in resisting the AI imaginary by designing learning environments that cultivate students’ skepticism about AI’s ability to transform education, leading to more nuanced views of what, if any, role AI has in the classroom.

Authors

• Charles Logan, Northwestern University

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University