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LAWRENCE — Few concepts are more provocative or intimidating than “artificial intelligence.” For certain professions, it represents a harbinger of total change. This is especially true in the realm of education.

But while much of the focus has been devoted to students’ perspective of AI, two professors are finding ways for educators to interrogate, and perhaps integrate, this breakthrough technology into their curriculum.

“Educators often have technologies forced on them. Maybe the IT department just drops it in their lap, and the administration says, ‘Use this.’ Teachers are in a position where they’re relatively disempowered in this conversation,” said Sean Kamperman, assistant professor of English at the University of Kansas.

“We’re attempting to get them to think critically about AI, and to think about the affordances, limitations and ethical harms before they choose to use it.”

Kamperman and Kathryn Conrad, KU professor of English, have written an article titled “Building Critical AI Literacy: An Approach to Generative AI,” which is based on their National Humanities Center AI & Digital Literacy institute series. The article offers a guide for educators to help students and fellow teachers develop critical AI literacy and appears in a special issue of Thresholds in Education devoted to the topic.

“It can be hard to talk about AI because it is an umbrella term for a number of related technologies; it is more of a marketing term than a technical one,” Kamperman said. “We try to communicate to people it’s best to be as specific as possible when you’re talking about any sort of AI technology. For instance, Emily Bender, who’s a linguist and machine learning specialist, refers to large language models as ‘synthetic text generators.’” 

So while defining AI is already tricky, then what exactly is AI literacy?

“It’s also hard to pin down a definition,” Kamperman said. “But in general, AI literacy usually means upskilling people with the assumption that they will be using the technology. We have a different approach. We try to cultivate thinking about the technology critically, studying it as one would any piece of machinery. Trying to understand it, its affordances, its limitations, its ethical norms as a precondition to use.” 

Kamperman and Conrad based their recommendations on the AI & Digital Literacy institute, which they first created for Kansas City-area teachers in 2024 and later expanded to national educators. Both events were held on KU’s campus. (They received a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities award for the second institute that was terminated along with all other NEH grants as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s funding cuts.)

“The professional development is useful, but we’re focused on helping educators network. They can continue learning about the technology because it changes so fast, and they find like-minded people who they can fall back on,” Kamperman said.

The feedback from these institutes reflected many concerns about learning loss with students due to AI. This led to multiple conversations regarding the foundational elements of learning itself. “Friction” became the key phrase that kept being mentioned.

“One way in which AI companies promote their technology is by claiming it creates a frictionless experience. Even if that were true, this isn’t necessarily a strength in an educational environment. There’s a debate now concerning how much friction is necessary to actually learn something. Like when learning to write, for example, friction is probably how you learn to manipulate the text in ways that allow you to engage more fully,” Kamperman said.

Although some teachers have used AI to help suggest and create lesson plans — which an old-fashioned Google search is often equally capable of providing — Kamperman finds more precise uses for it.

“It tends to be good at things like rubrics and aligning course content with standards,” he said. “So say you have an idea for a lesson plan, you can type in the idea and say, ‘Align this with the standards in my state.’ It will spit out a decent draft. There’s a lot of ‘checking of the boxes’ that teachers have to do with the materials they create, and it can really streamline that process.”

A professor at KU since 2022 who specializes in rhetoric, professional and technical writing and disability studies, Kamperman said he hopes the article helps people consider how crucial critical AI literacy is for educators. And he believes the work and the institutes that inspired it will provide a blueprint for implementing this technology in the years to come.

“Teachers today need opportunities to develop a thoughtful approach to AI. Various kinds of AI-powered courses are already being marketed to individuals who are looking for an alternative to traditional universities to get some kind of upskilling, training and education very cheap. More people are going to migrate toward those options, and there will be a public debate about what’s better,” Kamperman said.

“But I’m not a believer that we’re going to get to the point in 10 years where human teachers have been significantly displaced by androids. Education is a human activity.”