Recl[AI]m Futures AI Manifestation and Syllabus Statement

With the use of AI encouraged in many spaces today, we offer a manifestation and syllabus statement of our perspective

The Manifestation

The Digital Apothecary Lab, a collective of teachers, students, and alchemists, 

  • refuses AI as presented to us

    • We resist the notion that the speed AI promises is inherently helpful

    • We reject the false urgency and real ableism of the inevitability of AI

  • weighs the harms of the technologies presented against their utility 

  • moves towards future where we’re not relying on these technologies in coercive ways

    • We know pushes for productivity within a capitalist system are not real solutions to societal problems

    • We do not valorize a digital future nor romanticize an analog past but remain curious about what worlds are possible when we hold both together

    • We believe that the solution to the rapid adoption of AI and their accompanying harms cannot be doubling down on surveillance and punishment

  • recl[AI]ms the possibilities of ethical digital futures through the championing of slow work where we value process over product

    • We work collaboratively with our communities to ensure that alternative tools, knowledges, and engagements are included  

    • We call forth a new relation with the digital through the integrating of technologies derived before its birth and those we have yet to imagine all begins with an idea.

We will attempt to tread a little lighter on the planet, at least in the context of this classroom. Assignments and grades will be submitted both by hand and electronically depending on the requirements. Students are encouraged to use the same notebook and journal for in class assignments. I take seriously the hidden environmental and human costs of AI so we will continue to minimize its use in this class and the resulting harm it causes. My lab, the Digital Apothecary, has written a statement about AI in which we question its growing role in our world. There is no question that in this class, AI should not be used for course work as we are embarking on the very human process of creating our own stories. “Any use of content generated by artificial intelligence, constitutes a violation of Northwestern’s academic integrity policy.”

— Syllabus Statement