ISSUE 4: AI, Ethics and Education
In this Special Issue, researchers, educators and students at the University of Exeter (UK) examine the ways in which their lives are being re-shaped by the opportunities, challenges and risks of AI – both now, and looking ahead to the future.
The stories that follow explore encounters with AI ethics across a wide range of professional experiences. One contributor traces LLMs from GPT‑2’s non sequiturs to today’s polished-but-clichéd prose and asks what humanities graduates now have to offer. A student changemaker makes the case for MakerSpaces as places where failure — not the chatbot — teaches you engineering. An oral historian weighs AI’s promise against the informed-consent nightmares it creates. A social psychology researcher wants AI for transcription, not for interpretation. A computer vision academic argues that we must learn how to query what machines appear to see. Some ask hard questions: should refusing AI be a protected choice? Will GenAI will hollow out software engineering the way CNC hollowed out machining? What does ethics even mean when your data categories were biased before AI arrived? Others trace assistive tech back to 1960s social stigma to ask who AI’s benefits actually reach.
AI and ethics has become a shorthand for countless hopes, anxieties and passionately argued positions. When I sent out invitations for contributions to this Special Issue, I was genuinely uncertain about what kinds of responses I’d receive. What arrived was high-stakes, reflective writing by people navigating a rapidly, unevenly transforming landscape, and dedicated to curiosity and care for the future. Together, these stories show how investment in socially just technological futurity is a cornerstone of personal and professional life, uniting us across the disciplines.
August 2026
PROJECT LEAD Professor Natalie Pollard
Associate Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture, University of Exeter (UK)
CONTACT
For inquiries, questions, collaborations, and to express your interest in submitting a story to Unhoming Pedagogies, please contact Natalie Pollard.
