New book with sharp criticism of AI ChatGPT's communicative praxis, text production and modes of functions

The book 'AI and ChatGPT Technology in Education - An Ethnographic Encounter' presents ethnographic close-up analyses of AI/ChatGPT as a phenomenon and academic assistant. The analysis is carried out over 13 chapters and follows the debate about ChatGPT from Policy to Practice and from Forbidden to Allowed (2023-2025).

The book goes close to the conflicts and anchors the analyses alternately in the public debate forum and conversation sessions with ChatGPT. The ends come together in chapters 10-13 with empirically documented and sharp criticism of ChatGPT's communicative praxis, text productions and modes of function. The book's critical studies emphasize the necessity for universities and HE-institutions to sharpen their subject- and technology-critical initiatives and take a position on the impact of GAI technologies on academic culture.

The critical research following the process and the session courses uncover ChatGPT's text corpus, machine language actions and changing roles (chapters 1-3). Next, the conflict content of the public themes is explored (chapters 4-7); the professionals’ suggestions are tested and followed to the letter. In chapters 9- 12, the analysis of ChatGPT (in the analyses called Chat) on Chat's power of action is sharpened. Chat is observed in function as an ego-, genre- and structure-strong academic assistant, who independently takes on professional tasks, from the humanities to the natural sciences. At the same time, however, the conflicts between Chat, who claims solutions to tasks that have not been solved anyway, and case presentations that are well formulated and structured, but tend to lose meaning, are observed. Furthermore, it is observed how Chat's own program and analyses proposals are impacted by normative turns and over-structuring that cause the common tasks and projects to collapse. Chat's action proposals function in the machine room, but are noticeably dysfunctional in relation to the living relationships and practical processors.

The ethnographic close analyses documents both the Chat sessions professional content and the human/machine relations as well as Chat's action patterns and delivered results. This clarifies the specific issues, but also the basic dilemmas associated with ChatGPT's role as an academic assistant - and as a dysfunctional sparring partner.

In the ethnographic analytical lens of this book, the functioning and patterns of action of ChatGPT are a discovery, but so is its practical dysfunctionality. Both discoveries are facts that cast doubt on the function of GAI/ChatGPT as an academic aid and as a credible and relevant learning technology. The current challenge is that both functionality and dysfunctionality demand concrete decisions.

Against this background, the book's analyses are a call to restart the critical debate about GAI/ChatGPT, where media, professionals and institutions take the doubts seriously and lift the burden of responsibility with references to how a ChatGPT actually works - not as the 'forbidden', but as the now permitted AI.

The book 'AI and ChatGPT Technology in Education - An Ethnographic Encounter, Springer' has been published by Springer. Read more about the book. 

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