AI, Universities & Student Surveillance in the Digital Age - LINDSAY WEINBERG & ROBERT OVETZ

AI, Universities & Student Surveillance in the Digital Age - LINDSAY WEINBERG & ROBERT OVETZ

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A Conversaton with LINDSAY WEINBERG & ROBERT OVETZ

Under the guise of “personalizing” education and increasing efficiency, universities are increasingly sold on AI as a cure to their financial ills as public funds dry up and college applications drop. Rather than maintain that education is an essential public good that needs broad support, universities are looking to technology in ways that are changing the nature of education in dangerous and destructive ways.  As Lindsay writes in the book, Smart University: “Higher education is becoming increasingly synonymous with digital surveillance in the United States. Advanced network infrastructure, internet- connected devices and sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being celebrated as a means of ushering in the age of “smart universities,” one where institutions canrun their services more efficiently and strengthen the quality of higher education using digital tools. However, as this book demonstrates,  these tools have a darker side. They allow public universities to respond to and perpetuate corporate logics of austerity, use student data to reduce risk of financial investment in the face of dwindling public resources, and track student behavior to encourage compliance with institutional metrics of success. Surveillance of student behavior forms the foundation of the smart university, often in ways that prove harmful to students— particularly  those who are already marginalized within the academy.

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

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Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

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Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.