Of Chatbots and Colonizers: A FUN Workshop Mini Symposium

Chatbots and related technologies are predicted to become fixtures in our teaching. These tools scan information from the web or other sources and deliver content in textual summaries. ChatGPT4 and other AI products are surprisingly good at summaries of information and simple analysis, similar to what we often ask students to do as part of our teaching. They are poor at evaluation of information and citation of sources at the moment, but these tools are advancing rapidly. Use of these tools in the classroom generate important questions about how we handle content, understanding and skill development in the classroom, how information is curated, and the structure of information in our discipline. Additionally, accessibility of these tools will be an issue moving forward since they have the potential to widen a technology divide even further. Through presentation and group discussion, this minisymposium highlighted how we might integrate these tools and craft new pedagogies that will continue to engage and challenge our students. We also discussed concerns about these tools in terms of inclusive pedagogy and decolonization of neuroscience.