AI Quotes Activity
Running the activity in the classroom
The AI quotes activity was created as an introductory activity to encourage people to consider critical interpretations of AI that go beyond simply seeing AI as tools that always result in social progress. Educators can use all the quotes in full, choose some, or use simplified quotes. The Google slides linked below are intended to be printed out and posted on classroom walls for a “gallery walk,” but teachers can adapt the activity for their contexts.
We have continued adding quotes to this page as our community shares new ones with us. Only the quotes we have used in the classroom appear in the slides, but of course, it is easy to modify the slides to include different quotes. Please continue to check back for updates.
Creators: Dan Krutka and Marie Heath
What are different ways to think about AI?
AI quotes activity instructions: Read the quotes and consider the following questions:
What do you believe each quote means?
How does the time and place from which it originates effect its meaning for today?
Which quote most resonates with you—for better or worse?
Jot down your responses and prepare to discuss them with a partner or small groups.
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— Chris Gilliard (@hypervisible) & Guy McHendry (@acaguy) (academics & technology critics), sticker, 2021
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— Brian Merchant (Technology Journalist), Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, p. 315, 2023
What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.
— Joseph Weizenbaum (Computer Scientist; Creator of the ELIZA chatbot), Computer Power and Human Reason, 1976
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— Meredith Broussard (data journalism professor), More than a glitch, 2023, p. 2
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— L.M. Sacassas ( professor), “Embracing Sub-Optimal Relationships” from The Convivial Society [blog], 2024, para. 13
…In this book I argue that AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. Rather, artificial intelligence is both embodied and material, made from natural resources, fuel, human labor, infrastructures, logistics, histories, and classifications. AI systems are not autonomous, rational, or able to discern anything without extensive, computationally intensive training with large datasets or predefined rules and rewards. In fact, artificial intelligence as we know it depends entirely on a much wider set of political and social structures. And due to the capital required to build AI at scale and the ways of seeing that it optimizes AI systems are ultimately designed to serve existing dominant interests. In this sense, artificial intelligence is a registry of power.
— Kate Crawford (Academic), Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, 2021
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— Chris Gilliard (@hypervisible) & Guy McHendry (@acaguy) (academics & technology critics), sticker, 2021
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— Brian Merchant (Technology Journalist), Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, p. 315, 2023
But A.I. is a parasite. It attaches itself to a robust learning ecosystem and speeds up some parts of the decision process. The parasite and the host can peacefully coexist as long as the parasite does not starve its host. The political problem with A.I.’s hype is that its most compelling use case is starving the host — fewer teachers, fewer degrees, fewer workers, fewer healthy information environments.
— Tressie McMillan Cottom (Professor of Sociology, Technology, & Society), “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes ,” New York Times, 2025
We need people in our lives, not the simulation of people.
— L.M. Sacassas ( professor), “Embracing Sub-Optimal Relationships” from The Convivial Society [blog], 2024, para. 13
Our tools are cultural not merely technological, so while many people want to frame the emergence of generative AI as simply the latest development in the long history of computers, of artificial intelligence -- transformers, neural networks, tokens, and so on -- we have to remember that what emerges is not just a matter of engineering. It's a matter of markets and politics and ideology and culture.
— Audrey Watters ( Tech Critic), “AI Grief Observed” from Second Breakfast [blog], 2025, para. 16
Letting a robot structure your argument, or flatten your style by removing the quirky elements, is dangerous. It’s a streamlined way to flatten the human mind, to homogenize human thought. We know who we are, at least in part, by finding the words — messy, imprecise, unexpected — to tell others, and ourselves, how we see the world. The world which no one else sees in exactly that way.
— Margaret Renki (Writer), “I, Human,” New York Times, 2025
This is not to say that generative AI cannot be useful, but as opposed to seeing it as a “co-intelligence” or research partner, we should instead see generative AI as something closer to this:
A Lab will bring us anything: a toy, a dead squirrel, a living squirrel, a rock, a stick, a gold bar. They are friendly, indefatigable and non-discerning.
— John Warner (Education writer), “The Limits of AI Research for Real Writers,” The Biblioracle Recommends [blog], 2025