Research Talk "Envisioning and Designing AI for Equitable Futures: Navigating between Expansive Possibilities and the Status Quo"

What is the role of artificial intelligence (AI) amidst calls to imagine socially just, joyful possibilities for education? This presentation explains how ethical and relational approaches to co-design can open up new metaphors for AI in education. These new metaphors center youth's desire to be cared for inside an educational institution governed by logics of meritocracy and individualism. Applying a sociocultural social practice approach to the design and analysis of a co-design workshop, I explain the pedagogical conditions and interactive mechanisms that shape how liminal, new possibilities for school and AI are constructed. Ultimately, existing relationships and structures from the status quo can be easily appropriated into fragile, imagined worlds that don't yet exist. I then connect this understanding to pedagogical designs that support co-design partners in navigating tensions between the status quo and expansive possibilities. This approach has led to the design and implementation of a new AI metaphor and tool that supports young people in caring for each other. I conclude by demonstrating that applying these new metaphors in learning environments require braided efforts across the interdisciplinary development of AI tools, privacy-preserving technology infrastructure, curriculum, and educational policy