Students Dissecting, Mimicking, and Resisting Generative AI for Civic and Humanistic Purposes

• In Event: How Students Engage with GenAI: From Resistance to Empowerment

Abstract

This social design-based experiment explored how high school students communicate with Generative AI tools and construct understandings of them. Analysis of ChatGPT logs, audio recordings, and semi-structured interviews found that students dissected, mimicked, and resisted GenAI for civic and humanistic purposes. First, students dissected GenAI, demystifying tools like ChatGPT by tinkering with guardrails, prompts, and workarounds. Second, students mimicked GenAI, engaging playfully by imitating and mocking the tool. Third, students resisted GenAI, interrogating the tool’s “unhuman” nature. These activities recentered feelings of human ingenuity within the young people, paving the way for personal, social, and political explorations using GenAI. By situating GenAI tools as precisely that– tools– they created and generated new knowledge for civic and humanistic purposes.

Authors

• Daniel P. Moore, Seton Hall University

• Antero Garcia, Stanford University

• Nicole Mirra, University of California - Los Angeles

• Matthew Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Max Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin - Madison