Several AI-powered platforms aimed at fostering civil dialogue have emerged in recent years.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | benoitb, ibenk.88, Kateryna Onyshchuk and Lacheev\/iStock\/Getty Images | triloks\/E+\/Getty Images\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, higher education institutions have adopted emerging artificial intelligence tools in an effort to enhance nearly every aspect of campus life\u2014not just teaching and learning but also admissions<\/a>, alumni networks<\/a>, fundraising<\/a> and advising<\/a>. Now some are even experimenting with AI\u2019s ability to advance one of the hottest trends on college campuses: fostering constructive dialogue among students, who are more divided over politics now than at any point in the past<\/a> 40 years.<\/p>\n That\u2019s largely a reflection of the broader political polarization that has plagued American society over the past decade, a dynamic that intensified on college campuses over the pro-Palestinian protests that broke out during the Israel-Hamas war. Indeed, the share of students who said they were uncomfortable sharing their political views<\/a> on campus climbed from 13\u00a0percent to 33\u00a0percent between 2015 and 2024. <\/p>\n To help bridge those divides, colleges are increasingly partnering with organizations aimed at promoting civil dialogue, including Braver Angels, BridgeUSA, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Constructive Dialogue Institute. And lately, AI is becoming part of the conversation. <\/p>\n \u201cMost of the dialogue programs out there aren\u2019t scalable,\u201d said Mylien Duong, chief impact officer of CDI, which launched in 2017. \u201cThe power of AI is that it can provide coaching and feedback in real time without having to rely on human power.\u201d <\/p>\n A host of AI-powered constructive dialogue platforms have emerged in recent years; CDI is piloting an AI-enabled component for its Perspectives learning program<\/a>, which uses a mix of peer-to-peer conversation and online learning modules to equip students with the skills they need to have tough conversations. <\/p>\n The program\u2019s new AI chatbot seeks to further that mission by coaching students on actively listening to a person with an opposing view, expressing their views without becoming defensive or upset, and finding common ground amid fundamental disagreement. A chatbot presents students with a hypothetical scenario\u2014ranging from a roommate dispute to a heated debate about abortion, immigration or war in the Middle East\u2014and gives them feedback on their responses. <\/p>\n \u201cHaving difficult conversations with real people in real time can be hard,\u201d said Lindsay Hoffman, an associate professor of political communication at the University of Delaware, who is beta testing CDI\u2019s AI tool with her students this semester. \u201cThe AI component creates a safe space where students can express ideas that they may not feel comfortable expressing to another human being.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, her students say it\u2019s been mostly helpful. <\/p>\n \u201cYou got to practice without the fear of messing up,\u201d wrote one student on an anonymous feedback survey. \u201cThe practice coach made the lessons feel interactive and realistic,\u201d wrote another. \u201cIt gave clear prompts and scenarios that helped me actually practice skills like perspective taking, looping, and asking constructive questions instead of just reading about them. It also helped me slow down and think about how to respond in a calmer, more respectful way.\u201d<\/p>\n However, AI has limits as a constructive dialogue tool, according to a white paper CDI published late last month<\/a>. In short, the more freedom a generative AI tool has to shape conversations, the riskier it becomes. <\/p>\n The paper identified three roles that emerging AI-powered constructive dialogue tools have assumed: In addition to the coach, which helps students build individual dialogue skills, AI can act as a mediator, seeking to facilitate conversations across differences, or a conversation partner that engages students in disagreement.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross those roles, we see the most benefits and fewest risks when AI\u2019s role in dialogue is most constrained and pedagogically focused,\u201d said Ryan Carlson, a research scientist at CDI and author of the paper. That means programming chatbots to give focused prompts and meaningful feedback that pushes students to develop their dialogue skills\u2014and doesn\u2019t just tell them what to say. <\/p>\n \u201cCoaches are the most promising path for beginning this process of institutions starting to engage in a more intentional way with AI on campus,\u201d Carlson added. \u201cThe vast majority of students are already using AI without any guardrails, and the evidence suggests it\u2019s essential that we start investing more in evidence-based tools that are built by educators that can help ensure students experience the friction required to learn dialogue skills.\u201d<\/p>\n Risky AI Mediator, Adversary<\/p>\n While the coaching role poses minimal risks\u2014which are mostly tied to easy-to-remedy design and interface issues\u2014deploying AI as a mediator or discussion partner presents deeper, existential hazards, according to the paper.<\/p>\n When tasked with mediating a live conversation between two students, \u201cthe AI becomes responsible for determining what counts as an appropriate topic for dialogue,\u201d Carlson said. For instance, \u201cIt runs the risk of making false equivalencies. AI could potentially treat as equivalent a well-evidenced claim and one that is based on very little empirical support, whereas a trained human mediator would be able to detect that problem right away.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s also not clear how well an AI mediator can handle heated conversations or recognize when human oversight is warranted, he added. But the riskiest of all of those roles is using AI as a debate partner; Carlson said the bot often struggles to offer \u201can accurate representation of someone holding [an opposing] belief.\u201d That\u2019s in part because, as other research shows<\/a>, AI is far more persuasive than the average human\u2014even when it relies on false or misleading information to craft its arguments. <\/p>\n \u201cIf AI is capable of changing our minds in a way that\u2019s more powerful than humans and it\u2019s then deployed at a massive scale, we\u2019re opening up a can of worms,\u201d said Duong of CDI. \u201cWho gets to say what\u2019s in bounds and what\u2019s out of bounds, what a conspiracy theory is and is not, or what\u2019s evidence based and what\u2019s not? The AI has to point in a specific direction, and behind that specific direction is a set of human designers. It concentrates a lot of power in the design of the AI.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several AI-powered platforms aimed at fostering civil dialogue have emerged in recent years. 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