[Air-L] SUNY Council on Writing Conference 2023: =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=9CWriting=2C_?=Thinking, and Learning with AI”

[Matthew Salzano]

Hi all,

I am writing to share the SUNY Council on Writing’s CFP for a virtual conference in October that may be of interest to AoIR members. We welcome submissions from a disciplinary perspectives beyond rhetoric and writing! Apologies for cross listing.

“Writing, Thinking, and Learning with AI: Exploring Relationships of Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence”
Join us October 13–14, 2023, for a virtual conference hosted by the SUNY Council on Writing and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University.

The recent attention given to the topic of artificial intelligence has been largely attributed to the introduction of ChatGPT, the conversational (and controversial) chatbot released by OpenAI. ChatGPT, itself an assemblage of many technologies like large language models, neural networks, and natural language processing that we colloquially simplify to “AI,” represents only a portion of the larger landscape of machine learning and artificial intelligence development that has taken place over decades. But the sudden explosion of public access to sophisticated generative AI programs like ChatGPT has pushed into the mainstream the idea that machines can “write” (perhaps even in ways some readers see as cogent and well-reasoned) in response to open-ended questions. What does it mean to practice rhetoric in this age of artificial intelligence? What does it mean, more broadly, to write, think, and learn? How does this new development in “writing technology” reshape our understanding and practice as human rhetors? What are the areas of concern and/or potential, and how do we address them in different disciplines and contexts? What rhetorical relationships of AI and writing, thinking, and learning might we wish to amplify or attenuate?

We invite teachers and scholars across all disciplines to come together to explore the broader implications of generative AI tools like ChatGPT for the future of rhetoric, writing, thinking, and learning. This year, we want to specifically invite scholars/educators from other disciplines who are interested in how their own subjects and classrooms are being influenced by rhetoric and AI. We welcome panels and presentations that engage with how we may carve new pathways of pedagogy and scholarship by advancing our understanding of new modes of artificial intelligence, addressing what we value about human agency as writers, and exploring how we may use and shape this emerging technology.

Some ways to engage with the theme include but are not limited to the following topics:

• Ethics of persuasion by and with AI
• Critical thinking and computer thinking
• The ethics of using language-generation software in student writing, and the ethics of “detecting” such use
• Existing and emerging AI developments and platforms likely to influence writing and rhetoric in the future
• Enhancing learning and pedagogy (in/across the disciplines) with artificial intelligence
• Dominant discourses and rhetorics of AI
• Student agency and artificial intelligence
• Public discourse and perception of AI, writing, and/or education
• Social change and artificial intelligence
• AI and linguistic diversity, neurodiversity, and equity
• Hermeneutic and ontological grounding in the age of AI

We encourage submissions from faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars across the disciplines within and beyond SUNY. In addition to traditional abstract and panel presentation proposals, we seek out unique submissions that play with conference form, for example by (1) assembling workshops and discussions to address a central question or problematic regarding AI and rhetoric to prompt community conversations, (2) bringing together a panel with scholars from rhetoric and writing with experts in other fields, and (3) preparing a demonstration or performance of inventive and artistic uses of AI, writing, and rhetoric.

Please submit your proposals via this Google Form: https://forms.gle/HV7gGHe45Wb57e2y5. Deadline for submissions is Monday August 14, 2023, by 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

Questions should be directed to sunycouncilonwriting at gmail.com and more information will be available on our website: https://sunycouncilonwriting.org/conferences/

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Matthew Salzano, Ph.D. (he/him)
IDEA Fellow, Ethical AI, Information Systems, and Data Science and Literacy
School of Communication and Journalism/Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science®
Program in Writing and Rhetoric

Stony Brook University
Melville Library N4004
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3384

matthew.salzano at stonybrook.edu
matthewsalzano.com