Each year, the TLC hosts a convocation to bring together educators across the campus and from the local community to explore significant topics in teaching and learning in higher education. Each year’s keynote address is free and open to the public.

This year’s Convocation speaker will be Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, who will present his talk, The High Cost of Outsourcing Thought: On the Ideology of Artificial Intelligence.

His talk will examine the ideas that have motivated the rush to deploy both generative artificial intelligence and predictive artificial intelligence into our computer systems and our lives. It will consider the effects on our collective intelligence and our habits of creativity and collaboration. What problem do we hope to solve with this suite of technologies? What do we gain? What do we lose? And how should those questions shape how educators and students interface with these technologies?

Afterwards, Dr. Vaidhyanathan will be joined in conversation by THI Faculty Director and Linguistics Professor Pranav Anand.

Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011). After five years as a professional journalist, he earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Pranav Anand is Professor of Linguistics and Faculty Director of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz. His research investigates how context mediates the interpretation of language, and has explored the interpretation of subjectivity, persuasive tactics, bias, evidence, belief, time, and narrative structure.

To view past convocations visit: TLC | About Convocation