AI Agents, Humans and Untangling the Marketing of Artificial Intelligence in Learning Environments

This exploratory study identifies the tangling of proposed relationships between human and nonhuman agents by providing an analysis on how AI technologies are marketed for learning subjects through a critical discourse analysis of corporate advertisements. We ask: Amid these emerging technologies, how are humans and AI technologies framed as agents with agency? How are learners framed by corporate advertising as part of this blurring? We used a public, open-access cultural analytics database and repository, Fabric of Digital Life ('Fabric', https://fabricofdigitallife.com/), to identify a set of artifacts as a dataset for such analysis. Results indicate that advertising promotes corporate products while also promoting idealized social practices for human-computer interaction and human-robot interaction in learning contexts. Using AI to automate relationships between students and teachers frames AI systems as authorities in both robot and non-robot platforms, blurring and minimizing student and instructor agency in learning environments.