By HASTAC CoFounder and CoDirector, Cathy N. Davidson*
Having posted two blogs on HASTAC about AI, I’ve decided to write an (ir)regular series of posts on this topic, entitled “Intelligent Artifice: Thinking Wisely and Well With, Through, About, Around, and Despite AI.” Neither an AI booster nor an AI hater, I think we need to use our own best human intelligence to gain a better hold on this automated, computational tool that can dramatically change our lives. Right now, it is up to us to decide how we want, as individuals, to use or not use AI. It is up to our schools and communities to make the same decision. And it is up to our local, state, federal, and international governance bodies to make such intelligent decisions to. How can we use this powerful information tool for good? How much damage can it do to us if used for malignant, authoritarian, oligarchic purposes?
In short, the motivation of my blog is to find ways to give us agency and responsibility for intelligently, humanly managing and controlling AI. I’ll be reviewing books on AI that I’m reading, new experiments being conducted, new research projects, and new ideas that I encounter on social media (@cathyndavidson.bsky.social) and elsewhere.
I am engaged in this extensive, in depth research on AI because I am currently writing a book that offers a long, historical view on today’s AI with the pragmatic goal of helping readers to gain a better hold on what AI can and cannot do and what benefits and risks it offers to us as individuals, communities, nations, and as a planet. I want individuals to have tools to make intelligent decisions about Artificial Intelligence, and to make claims, offer opinions, and exert control, choice and responsibility more confidently. Far too many of the books on AI are as full of hype and hysterial (positive and negative) as the pundits. I’ve now read some forty books and myriad articles on this subject, both on my own and in tandem with my excellent colleagues in the ST&SV (Society, Technology, and Social Values) Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). I’ll be posting reviews of these books and articles, and also offering general observations when I read “breaking news” about some new AI development.
My goal is to illuminate where things are murky, offer advice where I can, and to offer other sources for readers to turn to.
I welcome comments in the comment section below. I hope the HASTAC community will jump in, adding ideas, asserting contrary opinions when you have them, adding citations, agreeing or disagreeing.
I have written two “Intelligent Artifice” posts to date. They are:
“Auditing AI: A Great Book That Holds AI Accountable—And Shows How We Can Too”
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*ABOUT CATHY N. DAVIDSON
A leading voice on issues related to technology, society, and education Cathy N. Davidson (cathydavidson.com) is the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim, ACLS, Mellon, NEH, and NSF foundations, and is the 2025 Recipient of the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Higher Education, a lifetime achievement award for “pioneering contributions that have advanced learning opportunities and impacted countless lives.” The author or editor of some twenty academic and trade books, she has served on the board of directors of Mozilla, co-directed the competitions for the $245 million John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative, and was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council on the Humanities. She has twice keynoted the Nobel Prize Committee’s Forum on the Future of Learning.
Davidson served as Senior Advisor on Transformation to the Chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY) from 2019-2025 and as Founding Director of the Futures Initiative (2014-2025) and is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Digital Humanities, and Data Analysis and Visualization at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is also Distinguished Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University where she was named the first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, leading innovation in some sixty programs across the university. In 2000, she cofounded and continues to codirect HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, known as “Haystack”), the “world’s first academic social network,” comprised of some 18,000 members at over 400 institutions and in 30 countries.