AI and Intercultural Development

Returning from a week of courses at the IDR Institute in Milan, I’ve been thinking about the potentials of AI and intercultural learning. Largely because the subject of AI kept coming up in discussion. On one hand, we discussed how models like ChatGPT are already disrupting the normal relationship between student, work, and teacher. But what truly caught my imagination was Professor Bennett sharing his thoughts about how the emergence of AI may catalyze the development of more sophisticated consciousness- a result of interacting with the otherness that is AI. This, of course, would have big implications for the development of intercultural consciousness and our work.

In a way, our engagement with these models is akin to exercising intercultural communication. My experience working with ChatGPT and Midjourny over the past few months has showed me that these models are indeed different than me, and they need to be communicated to in a particular way. Producing good and appropriate text or images requires good prompts. Good prompts require good prompting. Prompting is an art and science, not so different than intercultural communication. By practicing good prompting, I am using my knowledge about how the machine sees the world to adapt my communication, so I may be understood by the machine. I’m treating the machine how it wants to be treated. This, of course, is the Platinum Rule- treat others as they want to be treated. It’s an essential concept for good intercultural communication. By interacting with these models, I am practicing intercultural communication.

Another implication, more obvious and available at this very moment, is about using this technology to “supercharge” the Interculturalist’s output. ChatGPT, for example, can be thought of us an assistant, or even an entire content team, allowing us to increase our productivity. This creates the conditions for our intercultural training and education to impact more people. Of course, the quality of our production is limited by our own grasp of the topic, our strategy for getting to the people, and our ability to harness the machines effectively. Never the less, we can use these machines (they are GPUs running in warehouses) to more efficiently get our ideas across. Below you will find an example of that.

While I’m deeply knowledgeable about the DMIS, I can only get across so much in limited time. But a picture is worth a thousand words. My paper for my IDRI Diploma was on using memes to communicate communicate concepts of intercultural development. Here, I used ChatGPT and Midjourney to create images representing the different positions of the DMIS. They are arranged in order from Denial to Integration, and are presented continuously. Can you spot the transitions from stage to stage?

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