Discipline-Specific Tech and AI Literacy

There is a growing need for technology and AI literacy, not only as a broad understanding of emerging tools, concepts, and potential applications, but in context with the tasks, needs, and values of specific disciplines and domains. Scholars, practitioners, and instructors have been experimenting with generative AI over the past three years but best practices for research, creative, and pedagogical work are being defined primarily by early adopters. Along a scale of skepticism to enthusiasm, there is room for healthy anxiety and careful exploration about the possibilities and limitations in augmenting “traditional” approaches to digital art practices, as described by the co–panelists of this session. This paper will report the results of a year-long collaboration between digital artists and technology specialists seeking to conceptualize and assess both pragmatic and holistic approaches to embedding emerging technologies into scholarship, practice, and pedagogy. This collaboration represents a cross-disciplinary, socio-technical endeavour to align our innovative potential with the ethical, cultural, and environmental implications of the technologies at our disposal.