Being human in the AI era: CritIC as interactional criticality

This end-of-project event reports on a British Academy/Leverhulme funded research programme that addresses this question through a series of interrelated studies in everyday, educational, professional, and intercultural contexts. Central to the project is the concept of Critical Interactional Competence (CritIC), understood as a uniquely human capacity for criticality, reflexivity, and creativity in interaction across both human-human and human-chatbot encounters.

Bringing together perspectives from applied linguistics, intercultural communication, human-computer interaction, and educational technology, the talk and panel discussion will examine the importance of CritIC at a time when social interactions and social relationships are being reshaped by AI.

The event marks the successful conclusion of the British Academy/Leverhulme grant (2024-2026), awarded to Dr David Wei Dai, that examines human-human and human-AI agent interactions in language learning, professional and intercultural communication contexts.

Speakers

• David Wei Dai, Lecturer in Professional Communication, UCL
• Carey Jewitt, Professor of Learning and Technology, UCL
• Constant Leung, Professor of Educational Linguistics, King’s College London
• Li Wei, Professor of Applied Linguistics, UCL
• Zhu Hua, Professor of Language Learning and Intercultural Communication, UCL

Related links

• More about the project: Critical Interactional Competence Network (CritIC Net)
• International Centre for Intercultural Studies
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media

Image

Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash.