Framing a Critical, Historical, Proactive View of AI Literacies in “Zero- Gravity” Spaces

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, hasty responses to immediate problems have worsened, ignoring the chance to revise policies, curriculum, and instructional practices. In 2023, a new source of reactions has (re)surfaced: Artificial intelligence (AI), mainly aimed at ChatGPT. Instead of looking at the big picture, many discussions focus on how to stop ChatGPT from permeating instructional practices: Digital spaces and AI have evolved for decades, and unless our infrastructure collapses, AI tools will remain. This chapter encourages readers to slow down and consider these spaces’ context. The authors used literacy theories, Cultural Historical Activity Theory, and the “zero-gravity spaces” metaphor to examine AI literacies from a less adversarial perspective that seems to dehumanize further and disenfranchise marginalized groups to think more carefully about AI’s language and text interplay potential. This chapter proposes a critical, historical, proactive view of AI literacies that symbiotically remixes policies, teaching methods, and technologies, including our cyborg lives. This mindset can help us imagine how to carefully integrate these aspects into educational policies and teaching methods instead of outlawing them so kids can play with digital tools more fairly and humanely.