Title : Questioning The Oracle: Rethinking AI, the classroom, and ourselves as educators

Participants: Woden Teachout, Chris Voparil

Publish Date: 05/15/2025

Homepage : http://www.dreport.org

Also available on:

Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, Soundclound

Conversation Topics:

How do we approach AI in our personhood and in our profession?

What happens if we consider AI as magic?

What happens if we perceive AI as monster?

Does AI have the power for deep destruction?

Can we imagine AI as a junior assistant ( very hard working but very potentially flawed)?

What happens if you ask an AI agent about Richard Rorty?

Do you need a professor to identify the limitations of using Ai to get answers?

Can students identify a paper written by a human from a paper generated by AI?

Why does it matter how people understand AI?

What if some of us think of AI as an oracle orb in cave?

Is the perception of AI a key factor in our response to AI?

What happened to the google employee that advocated for AI’s freedom? Blake Lemoine, a former Google engineer made headlines in 2022 when he publicly claimed that Google's AI system, LaMDA was sentient.

How humans relate to AI agents is important?

Have you read the book by Ethann Mollick titled Co-Intelligence?

Why does humanizing our interactions with AI result in more productive outcomes?

Are you familiar with critical AI literacy and Maha Bali?- https://blog.mahabali.me/

How does the perception of AI change the user of AI?

What are the safety parameters for AI we use as educators?

How do the types of question we ask affect the output?

Is AI only giving us predicted patterns of answers we want to see?

What are the implications of AI in education?

Is AI used in school undermining foundational educational skill sets?

What is the purpose of educators?

What is the purpose of students?

How do educators convince students that individual contribution is more valuable than the AI generated content?

Can we tell students that AI is not taking the class?

What are educators asking students to do that cannot be done by AI?

How does AI place a burden for educators to justify their value added in education?

Is AI used by students cheating? Is AI used by educators cheating?

How will students of the future change because of AI?

How must educators change because of AI?

Are you familiar with American philosopher Cathy Legg?

https://american-philosophy.org/i-am-an-american-philosopher-interview-series/cathy-legg/

Is it necessary for student to have an existential experience with the classroom material in order to have meaningful education?