What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI?

Care

Can AI help us solve the crisis of care? Can a chatbot care about a person? What are the limits of technology to find solutions to problems related to care? As part of UConn's Human-Centered AI Initiative, we've brought together a roundtable of scholars from Connecticut to Morocco define “care” within their discipline and discuss what care means when over 30% of AI users turn to their chatbots for therapy or companionship. UConn Humanities Institute and professor of English, Director Anna Mae Duane leads a conversation about AI and care, featuring Ihsane Hmamouchi, MD PhD, professor of Clinial Epidemiology, Université Internationale de Rabat and Michael Lynch, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut. Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast [https://humanities.uconn.edu/initiatives/ai-and-the-human/reading-between-the-lines/].

The Oracle of Chatbot with Michael Lynch

Michael Lynch (UConn) delivers his talk, “AI, Rights, and Epistemic Agency” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. In this episode, Michael Lynch presents the philosophical tensions between what has been understood as human rights and agency and how artificial intelligence complicates that relationship. Humans possess an unbelievably powerful capacity to make life plans, engage in projects, and make decisions that serve as the foundation for human rights and agency. For Lynch, the question of how the social integration of these chatbots will impact humans’ epistemic agency is the most pressing when it comes to the rapid expansion of AI usage in the contemporary moment. This epistemic agency is our capacity to know about the world, and that capacity becomes infinitely more complex with chatbots when they move out of the realm of tool used to extend that epistemic agency. As generative AI and chatbots continue to become more widely used, a delicate balance will have to be struck between the desire to know more and the subsequent tradeoff of losing understanding. Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Pg71vDhPajU [https://youtu.be/Pg71vDhPajU] Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast. [https://humanities.uconn.edu/initiatives/ai-and-the-human/reading-between-the-lines/]

The Revolution Will Be Digitized with John Murphy

John Murphy (UConn) delivers his talk, “The Coming AI Rights Revolution” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. In this episode, John Murphy explores the possibilities of what it will mean for humans to be able to merge the analog and digital world in the age of artificial intelligence. He structures his analysis around the “three pillars of civilization” or human rights, property rights, and labor rights, to reflect on how the current analog world is struggling to keep up with the digital world in ways that will directly impact what it means and will mean to be a human. For Murphy, the growth in AI has forced us to push the limits of what it means to be a human and what the legal rights of humanity, property, and labor will look like in an increasingly digital world. Moreover, the question of who will control these technologies and what kind of guardrails will be put in place to regulate them in the future looms as a pressing challenge within the legal realm. However, this caution can be met with a glimmer of hope that current students themselves already understand the consequences of too large an investment in AI. Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Cy4ruy3mO5Q [https://youtu.be/Cy4ruy3mO5Q] Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast. [https://humanities.uconn.edu/initiatives/ai-and-the-human/reading-between-the-lines/]

Human Rights in an Open-Source World with Avijit Ghosh

Avijit Ghosh delivers his talk, “Our Rights in an AI Infused Society,” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. In this episode, Avijit Ghosh examines how artificial intelligence has transformed human rights to the point where it’s increasingly being used to allocate goods and resources, such as deciding who gets matched to certain jobs. AI has fundamentally changed social and economic relationships between people and companies with governmental regulation slow to respond. These rapid technological changes have also resulted in complications regarding data access wherein people’s intellectual property rights are left vulnerable to a company’s unregulated licensing practices. In other words, the absence of regulation in AI has allowed companies to make their own rules when it comes to licensing, often to the detriment of people and rife with bias. For Ghosh, technological development can be done properly if the sole focus is not chasing profit. The future of data access and the role of the human within represents a delicate balance that will continue to be reconfigured as technological progress abounds. Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/dfZ2iUTdsH0 [https://youtu.be/dfZ2iUTdsH0] Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast. [https://humanities.uconn.edu/initiatives/ai-and-the-human/reading-between-the-lines/]

Protecting Workers in the AI Age with Meriem Regragui

Meriem Regragui (Université Internationale de Rabat) delivers her talk, “How Will AI Transform Labour Rights?” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. In this episode, Meriem Regragui outlines the increasingly complicated relationship between AI and labor rights, particularly around how laws should be enacted to protect workers and their rights to dignity, privacy, and fair treatment. This issue is not only local, but also international in a way that forces a reconfiguration of employability, social protection, and redistribution. The revaluing of labor has thus become foundational to understanding the role of AI within broader conversations of labor rights. For Regragui, one of the most pressing issues for the future will be to clarify from a legal perspective what an equitable right to work will look like in the AI era. The human being must ultimately be at the center of these discussions.   Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9uI7J22iySU [https://youtu.be/9uI7J22iySU] Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast. [https://humanities.uconn.edu/initiatives/ai-and-the-human/reading-between-the-lines/]