Designing interfaces for critical AI literacies

.title[
# DESIGNING INTERFACES FOR<br> CRITICAL AI LITERACIES
]

Chris Proctor<br>
May 14, 2026

---

.left-column[
# Outline

**Theoretical perspectives**
- What is literacy?
- The need for criticality

**Case study: writing with AI in Unfold Studio**
]

---

# What is literacy?

> "Literacy is a socially widespread patterned deployment of skills and capabilities 
> in a context of material support (that is, an exercise of material intelligence) 
> to achieve valued intellectual ends.".cite[1]

Two models of literacy .cite[2, 3]:

- **Autonomous model**: literacy is a universal and inherently empowering skillset. It is our duty to give literacy to those who lack it. 
- **Ideological model**: literacies are specific social practices embedded in identites, communities, media, and power relations. 
  Literacies *can* be powerful in the right circumstances.

.refs[
.anchor[1] diSessa, 2001, p.19
.anchor[2] Street, 1984
.anchor[3] Proctor & Rish, 2025
]

---

# Two axes of literacy

.refs[
.anchor[1] Kafai, Proctor, & Lui, 2019; Proctor, 2020; Kafai & Proctor, 2021
]

---

# Three purposes of education; three stakeholder roles

<table style="width:100%;margin-top:1.5em;">
  <tr><td><strong>Democratic equality</strong></td><td>Citizen</td><td>Public good</td></tr>
  <tr><td><strong>Social efficiency</strong></td><td>Taxpayer</td><td>Public good</td></tr>
  <tr><td><strong>Social mobility</strong></td><td>Consumer</td><td>Private good</td></tr>
</table>

.refs[
.anchor[1] Labaree, 1997
]
---

# Social value of widespread print literacy

<div class="bar-chart">
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Democratic equality</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:100%"><div style="width:100%;height:100%;background:#999"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social efficiency</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:91.8%"><div style="width:100%;height:100%;background:#999"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social mobility</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:81%"><div style="width:100%;height:100%;background:#999"></div></div></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="bar-legend">
  <div class="bar-legend-item"><div class="bar-legend-swatch" style="background:#999"></div> Print literacy</div>
</div>

---

# Social value of widespread computational literacy

<div class="bar-chart">
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Democratic equality</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:100%"><div style="width:70.4%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social efficiency</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:91.8%"><div style="width:88.2%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social mobility</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:81%"><div style="width:67.3%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="bar-legend">
  <div class="bar-legend-item"><div class="bar-legend-swatch" style="background:#999"></div> Print literacy</div>
  <div class="bar-legend-item"><div class="bar-legend-swatch" style="background:#41b6e6"></div> Computational literacy</div>
</div>

---

# Social value of widespread<br>AI literacy

<div class="bar-chart">
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Democratic equality</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:100%"><div style="width:14.6%;height:100%;background:#005bbb"></div><div style="width:55.8%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social efficiency</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:91.8%"><div style="width:79.6%;height:100%;background:#005bbb"></div><div style="width:8.6%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
  <div class="bar-row">
    <div class="bar-label">Social mobility</div>
    <div class="bar-container"><div class="bar-track" style="width:81%"><div style="width:15.3%;height:100%;background:#005bbb"></div><div style="width:52%;height:100%;background:#41b6e6"></div></div></div>
  </div>
</div>

---

# Infrastructure is taking over practices

---
background-position: top
background-image: url(/images/sketches/sketch_1_designing_futures.png)
background-size: contain

.bottom-third[
.half-frame[
# New Interfaces for<br> Collaborative Writing with AI
]
]

---
class: full-bleed-layout

---
class: full-bleed-layout

---

# Three authorial roles

| Role.cite[1] | Definition |
|------|-----------|
| **Animator** | The person who inscribes the words on the page |
| **Author** | The person who selects the sentiments and ideas |
| **Principal** | The person who is committed to what the words say |

These roles illuminate why AI is accepted in some contexts and rejected in others:

- **Email drafting**: AI as animator (accepted—like a greeting card)
- **Heartfelt public statements**: fraudulent authorship (betrayal)
- **Romantic chatbots**: ersatz principal (deeply controversial)

.refs[
.anchor[1] Goffman, 1981; Goff & Rish, 2020
]
---

# Three AI affordances

- `generate` delegates sensory detail
- `continue` delegates plot
- `agent` delegates character

---

# `generate`: Delegating detail

- Generates text in response to a provided prompt
- Similar to ChatGPT, but control flow returns to the story

```
{generate("One sentence describing an alien ship's
long halls with three doors.")}
```

→ *"The hallway's endless metal panels gleamed under cold violet luminescence, and three silent doors—one etched with shifting glyphs, one glowing with liquid emerald light, and one veiled in crackling blue plasma—stand like sentinels..."*

---

# `continue`: Delegating plot

- Generates a series of **open-ended user inputs** followed by AI responses
- Requires a **target knot**: the point where the scripted story resumes
- AI guides the interaction toward the target; rejects implausible inputs

```
-> continue(-> ending5)
```

The author retains the **principal** role by explicitly bounding where the open-ended interaction starts and ends.

---

# `agent`: Delegating character

- Requires **target** (story resumption point) and **character** (a sub-story modeling the character)
- AI generates responses **in the voice** of the character
- Makes it possible to write stories enacting a **dynamic struggle for control** between authorial voice and characters

---

# Case 1: Dragonbaby

- 9th-grade girl; collaborates with her 12th-grade sister (pair-programming style)
- Avid readers of fantasy; enjoy **fan-fiction**
- Final story: *"Our actions have consequences"* — fan-fiction set in *Percy Jackson*
- Also worked on *"Worlds collide"* (Percy Jackson × Harry Potter)
- **Neither had used generative AI before**

---

# Dragonbaby: Authorial roles

- **Animator** → frequently delegated to AI via `generate` and `continue`
- **Author** → increasingly *shared* with AI
  - Delighted to discover the LLM knew Percy Jackson lore
  - AI as co-author, dynamically deciding what happens next
- **Principal** → clearly retained ("her story"), but AI gained a subtle principal role

> Through intensive replaying and geeking out, Dragonbaby authored a **positive dialogic identity** embedded in AI-generated discourse—a fan-fiction literacy practice shared *with* the AI.

---

# Case 2: Quaezae

- 10th-grade girl; quiet, preferred working alone
- Very interested in **computational aspects** of interactive stories
- Expressed **moral opposition** to generative AI
  - *"GAI was ruining her friends' minds"*
  - Only used AI on friends' phones so it wouldn't be connected to her
- Agreed to participate after discussing how the technology worked
- Invited to **experiment with AI to become better-informed in her opposition**

---

# Quaezae: "Tellers"

A **dystopian story** in which implanted AI chips are required to participate in society.

> "AI has completely been enthralled into our lives... In this world, its been complete accepted, or more accureately ... **integrated**."

The distinction between "integrated" and "accepted" perfectly articulates the **dialogic nature of AI**.

---

# Quaezae: Two endings

**Accept the chip** ("The Good Ending" — sarcastically glossed):

> "Welcome back, Eric—how does it feel to be more than human? [...] you notice how…simple it is to have the new implant in your arm"

**"Reject modernity!"** ("Neutral Ending"):

> "You go on with your life like normal... but less and less places accept your physical card... You begin going down a path of stealing and crime"

An example of **interactional positioning** .cite[1]: the choice between giving yourself up to AI or social exclusion.

.refs[
.anchor[1] Wortham, 2000
]

---

# Quaezae: Authorial roles

- **Animator** → delegated to AI via `generate`
- **Author** → *not shared* with AI (wary, reluctant engagement)
- **Principal** → retained, but AI present in an **adversarial** mode
- Asks for reader's **name**, then injects it into AI prompts → unsettling experience of being put into dialogue with AI

> Quaezae's authorial identity is also **dialogically enmeshed with AI**—but *against her will*. The story feels claustrophobic: the authorial voice rejecting something she recognizes as part of herself.

---

class: middle, center, black

# Discussion

---

# Two contrasting dialogic identities

A **dialogic account of identity** is essential for conceptualizing and understanding collaboration with generative AI.

| | Dragonbaby | Quaezae |
|---|-----------|---------|
| Stance | Inspired, validated | Creeped out, "enthralled" |
| Mode | Enthusiastic co-authorship | Resistance and critical distance |
| AI relationship | Geeking out together | Fearing unwanted integration |

Both recognize the **dialogic nature** of writing with AI. Both author identities that are **distributed in literacy practices shaped by AI**.

---

# AI as active collaborator

- AI-based media is better understood as an **active collaborator in meaning-making** than as a tool passively mediating collaboration between people
- Instead of gaining control over AI as we internalize it, we **co-author our identities** and **co-produce meanings** with AI
- If collaboration may **transform us**, then collaboration with AI has the potential for a **sinister vulnerability without reciprocity**

---

# Dialogic criticality

- AI motivations and biases are **opaque**, shaped by commercial and geopolitical interests
- Need for **dialogic criticality**: not just interrogating AI as an external entity, but **introspecting on our own authorial identities** that are becoming intertwined with AI
- Interactive storytelling has particular potency as a tool for **dialogizing AI** while remaining in control of the interpretive context

> The novel destabilizes other literary forms so they "become dialogized, permeated with laughter, irony, humor, elements of self-parody..."
> —Bakhtin, 1981

---

# Conclusion

> Just as social media dialogized, colonized, and transformed our social relationships, AI is becoming ubiquitous in our literacy media and stands to **dialogize our authorial identities**.

- We are in the same situation as the reader in "Tellers": opting in means being transformed in ways we cannot choose; opting out means exclusion
- A dialogic understanding of identity can help bring into focus the **mechanisms and consequences** of our relationships with AI
- Technologies and pedagogies like those explored here may help create **critical possibilities for living in the age of AI**

---

.title[
# DESIGNING INTERFACES FOR<br> CRITICAL AI LITERACIES
]

Chris Proctor<br>
May 14, 2026