Learning to work with the black box: Pedagogy for a world with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrating into our society. University education needs to maintain its relevance in an AI-mediated world, but the higher education sector is only beginning to engage deeply with the implications of AI within society. We define AI according to a relational epistemology, where, in the context of a particular interaction, a computational artefact provides a judgement about an optimal course of action and that this judgement cannot be traced. Therefore, by definition, AI must always act as a 'black box'. Rather than seeking to explain 'black boxes', we argue that a pedagogy for an AI-mediated world involves learning to work with opaque, partial and ambiguous situations, which reflect the entangled relationships between people and technologies. Such a pedagogy asks learners locate AI as socially bounded, where AI is always understood within the contexts of its use. We outline two particular approaches to achieve this: (a) orienting students to quality standards that surround AIs, what might be called the tacit and explicit 'rules of the game'; and (b) providing meaningful interactions with AI systems.