AI Is Not Inevitable. A Conversation with Madisson Whitman

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Madisson Whitman, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Assistant Director of Curriculum Development at Columbia University's Center for Science and Society, and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. Drawing on her work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Whitman challenges one of the most pervasive assumptions of our moment: that AI in higher education is a foregone conclusion. In her recent letter to the editor in the Columbia Spectator, a student-run campus newspaper, Whitman offered a direct rebuttal to the sentiment that "AI is here to stay, so what does that mean for Columbia?" Instead, she invites us to resist the sense of "technological inevitability" that pervades so much of today's academic dialogue and to ask what we might be foreclosing when we don’t question AI’s presence in education. Together, we trace the through-lines between pandemic-era surveillance, "dysfunction creep," and the quiet ways AI is being folded into the learning management systems. We also consider what it looks like to teach with AI rather than through it. Dr. Whitman reminds us that progress is never as linear as it's sold. Educators must keep learning at the center of the conversation, even when urgency and marketing do their best to crowd it out. Other materials referenced in this episode: "AI Is Here to Stay: What Does That Mean for Columbia?" — Columbia Spectator "Letter to the Editor: AI Is Not Inevitable" — Madisson Whitman "A Rant About Technology" — Ursula K. Le Guin