CTIS Research Seminar - How can We Interact Better with GenAI in the Posthuman Era? A Call for the Development of Critical Interactional Competence in Intercultural Professional Communication
| Dates: | 13 March 2025 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Dr David Wei Dai |
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Against the proliferation of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) products such as ChatGPT and Gemini, and their increasing use in professional communication training, researchers, including applied linguists, have cautioned that these products (re)produce cultural stereotypes due to the data biases in the Large Language Models (LLM) on which they are based (Dai & Zhu, 2024). However, there is a limited understanding of how humans navigate the assumptions and biases present in the responses of these GenAI products, described by Jones (2024) as “culture machines” and the role humans play in perpetuating stereotypes during interactions with GenAI. In this talk, we use Sequential-Categorial Analysis, which combines Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis, to analyse simulated interactions between a human physiotherapist and GenAI patients of different cultural backgrounds. Coupled with analysis of information elicited from the GenAI chatbot and the human physiotherapist after each interaction, we demonstrate that GenAI users are highly susceptible to becoming interactionally entrenched in culturally essentialized narratives. We use the concepts of interactional instinct and interactional entrenchment to argue that whilst human-AI interaction may be instinctively prosocial, GenAI users need to develop Critical Interactional Competence (CritIC) for human-AI interaction through appropriate and targeted training and intervention, especially when GenAI tools are used in professional communication training programmes.
Online registration Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMlde6orDoqGdb8sWb2Gg1oVcqAFlCCw8NG
Speaker
Dr David Wei Dai
Role: Assistant Professor in Professional Communication
Organisation: University College London
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
A116
Samuel Alexander Building
Manchester
