The Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo advances knowledge through excellence in teaching, research, and creativity across the humanities, social sciences, and creative arts. The recent influx of Generative AI technologies in education challenges this mission by offering new opportunities for innovation while disrupting many traditional methodologies of Arts-based teaching, research, and artistic practice. AI has the potential to enrich our research activity and generate new forms of communication. At the same time, it challenges the integrity of disciplines that are rooted in human-centered writing practices, creative design, and trustworthy research materials. Moreover, AI is entangled with environmental, labour, and privacy issues that have created value tensions within our educational community. These tensions are core to contemporary discussions around the value of AI, and Arts faculty, students, and staff grapple with these challenges on a regular basis.
With these considerations in mind, the Faculty of Arts supports creative and critical engagement with Generative AI in research and education while respecting the autonomy of stakeholders who are free to adopt these new technologies or not at their own pace and according to their own values. Through the development of new courses and classroom modules, Arts will ensure that all students and instructors are equipped to critically assess new AI technologies and to make deliberate and informed choices about if and how they may be used to enhance learning and research. In addition, new resources for critical and creative AI development, offered within Arts and through cross-disciplinary partnerships, will ensure that Arts students and faculty have opportunities to experiment boldly and safely with new AI platforms. Arts is undertaking these initiatives to provide leadership for a future of AI that is human-centered, ethically informed, fair, trustworthy, and environmentally responsible.