Professor Youngblood Reflects on AI

Kyle Tabor | Contributing Author

For Part 2 of this series, I spoke to Dr. Youngblood, Professor and Associate Chair of the English Department, to talk generative AI – and some philosophy, too. Dr. Youngblood’s discipline is Digital Media, specifically video games, and the roles of gender and sexuality within them. His passion really started, I learned, with a Sega Genesis at 6 years old.

Our conversation was far-ranging, and the rapport we’ve built up in previous classes has already given me insight into his teaching practices. But an expansion in this format was welcome.

“The influence is happening at a few levels,” he says, “Development and production specifically. Take for instance the rise of AI voice acting, where generative algorithms can make infinite content at lower cost.” He cited the recent sale of massive studio Electronic Arts and its buyers’ stated intentions to include significant AI design elements going forward. “It’s drastically changing how games are made and raising questions about what remains of ‘the human element’ in these projects.”

In the classroom, convenience eats at depth. Dr. Youngblood’s approach has been firmly against AI. “Part of the reason to go into the Humanities is that it’s your way of thinking about the world, and the opportunity to develop a sense of how you characterize and develop argument, ideology, all these interconnected things. With complex assignments that ask students for their genuine thoughts on different texts, turning that over to a computer defeats the purpose.” His own experimentations with chatbot analysis have reinforced this: he emphasizes, “It was soulless, and the temptation to use these machines is the result of an education system that teaches people how to be right instead of being true. The hope as you move through an English major is that you’re not just doing what your professors are telling you to do – but that you use the texts and resources to come to your own conclusions. There’s no ownership of your ideas with AI.”

AI, he concedes, is a cool thing to have at your disposal – but in its current state, it hallucinates, it makes mistakes, it cites sources that do not exist. There is value in finding primary sources yourself, in looking at your field and assessing its state, hearing what people are writing about and why. AI is only going to give you what’s already existed. It’s built on what is. Humans innovate and react to their environment and connect with others. AI can’t lead an effective discussion or make a human connection

And then we get deep: “If you become a teacher, how will you ever teach anybody else, if you do nothing but regurgitate what the computer taught you as part of the next generation of educators? And what right would you have to punish future students for the same things you did yourself? The more people think about education as a transaction to get into a workplace that they’re already cynical about, the less people are going to invest in it. There are already historically low levels of confidence among students. The value of the Humanities is that it gives you a chance to evaluate your own ethics, expectations and beliefs about your world and others. What do we learn not just for a grade, but as a community of learning that means something after you leave this place?”

And I learn that this is the moment to double down on being human, to discover what the machine cannot do. Reading and writing are becoming luxury goods. The time it takes to thoughtfully read a book or write something is time which people feel they don’t have. There are so many other things asking for our time! “The things that have brought me the most joy started individually, and that love inspired me to share them with other people. Nowadays it may start in reverse, and it’s never been easier to do so. Interests become connected with your identity in a very complicated way. The moment of hope is when you engage with a text and realize, ‘I liked this, and it mattered to me.’”

The reason Dr. Youngblood loves to teach at the collegiate level is that it’s one of the few remaining ‘dedicated spaces’ for us and a set of ideas. People still crave that closeness. “There are all sorts of reasons given for why we don’t talk to one another, but the bottom line is when we do, we talk like lawyers. We come to the discussion knowing which side we’re taking, and the arguments we’re going to hold to. Everything will either help or hurt my ‘client’, helping me or hurting you.” This is incredibly draining and discourages any earnest dialogue in academia, politics and anywhere else.

“Genuine conversations can make you reevaluate. The classroom is an opportunity to talk again, be heard again, to listen in a way that’s not draining or pointless. We walk away and think, ‘I gained new perspective. I feel affirmed’. That is transformative, and if we can’t make these investments, that’s when we’re cooked.”

He expressed reservations about recent AI rhetoric, drawn from a recent Ted Chiang essay. AI is becoming corporatized: its proponents are fixated on resources, economy, time. There’s virtue in an act of labor that’s time-consuming and thoughtful! We are seeing the consequences of a society that’s putting its thinking on other devices – Do my thinking, writing, arguing for me. To think about something is to give up some of your time. If that’s an exchange we’re unwilling to make, how much more so for things like philosophy? Will we want to sit for hours and think about The Big Questions if we can’t see past our screens?

Dr. Youngblood concludes our interview with a quote from the sci-fi film Arrival (2016), very focused on concepts of language and meaning across barriers. ‘If all you’re ever given is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’

This work is the second part in the series. The first part can be found here.