Walking with Colossus: An Inconvenient Ethics with AI in Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: Complicated and Complicating Questions About the Role of AI in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to inconvenience AI in qualitative inquiry. Building on Paulus and Marone’s (2024) article that examines the discourses used in AI and my work (2015, 2023) with technological systems in qualitative inquiry, I use Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) work with haptic technologies to create an inconvenient more-than-human ethics with AI.

In the existing literature, AI is a tool that can be harnessed in qualitative research to facilitate and enhance data analysis (e.g., Nguyen-Trung, 2025; Prokopis, 2024),interviews (Chopra & Haaland, 2023; Parker, Richard, & Beckford, 2023), co-researcher (Johnson & Paulus, 2024; Panke, 2025), creation of a posthuman subjectivity (Yan, 2025), and representational ethics (e.g., Ngoc Quyny Phan & Le, 2025). These claims are based on transhumanist discourses about AI’s haptic capabilities. AI’s haptic capabilities are designed for users to learn about and trust the convenience of AI processes. In turn, these processes sell the idea that users can transcend their human capabilities and become more efficient and powerful.

Transhumanist discourses have material consequences. To study them, I engaged in Springgay and Truman’s (2018) walking-with, a responsive and sensorial practice attuned to how bodies are situated in place. I walked-with the T.O.Fuller State Park in Memphis, Tennessee that is situated between Colossus (the supercomputer that runs Grok, X’s AI) and Boxtown, a predominately Black neighborhood in South Memphis with 2 elementary schools, 1 middle school, and two high schools.

I hiked portions of a trail (not all was hiked due to trail damage) and walked other areas of the state park. I documented the walk with photography, video, sound, and fieldnotes. I completed document analysis of historical and current documents to situate the walks. The state park, a Civilian Conservation Corps project built in 1938, was the first park open to African Americans in Jim Crow South. Boxtown’s history stretches to 1863, when freed slaves first inhabited the area following the Emancipation Proclamation, and is now one of the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in South Memphis. Colossus, Elon Musk’s supercomputer for Grok (X’s AI), was built in Memphis, TN in 2024 over the span of 122 days and is currently undergoing expansion. As of the writing of this proposal, Grok has posted numerous antisemitic attacks and praised Hitler.

The walks and document analyses inconvenienced transhumanist discourses by materializing what makes their convenient efficiency possible. Walking with Colossus created space to consider “questions about the social relations, labors, and desires that may become obliterated through their development, use, and implementation” (Puig de la Bella Casa, 2017, p. 108). A more-than-human ethical approach lingers in those questions and considers the material consequences of them. Upon which environments, bodies, and histories are AI’s efficiency and convenience built? How might the unquestioned use of AI’s transhumanist discourses further uphold oppressive power relationships? How might a more-than-human ethics create community in divisive times? These questions aim to create inconveniences that engage an ethics that puts researchers in touch with all places, people, history, and cultures that make AI possible.

Author

• Susan N. Nordstrom, University of Alabama