“That Sounds Like ChatGPT!” Youth Civic Literacies and Unhumanizing Generative AI

• In Event: Youth Learning in Action: Moves Toward Civic, Digital, and Media Literacy

Abstract

Through a ten-week design-based activity, five high school students analyzed the inherent unhumanity of tools like ChatGPT. This study traced how these young people leveraged speculative civic literacies as they considered their personal, academic, and social futures via AI tools. Analysis of ~270 ChatGPT queries and audio recordings of in-person sessions and semi-structured interviews indicated that student literacies flourished by unhumanizing a digital agent within their learning environment. This occurred in three main ways, as participants 1) dissected, 2) mimicked, and 3) resisted GenAI. By unhumanizing GenAI, students centered its tools for humanistic purposes. In doing so, these students demonstrated a techno-optimism that centered their own creativity, agency, and humanity.

Authors

• Daniel P. Moore, Stanford University

• Nicole Mirra, Rutgers University

• Antero Garcia, Stanford University

• Matthew Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison