“I’m Not Worried about Robots Taking Over the World. I Guess I’m Worried about People”: Emoting, Teaching, and Learning with Generative AI

Qualitative studies that examine the impact of generative AI technologies on higher education remain scant. Whether it is the ethical dimensions of modeling human emotions within these technologies or the authentic emotional reactions to these technologies and their outputs—emotionality is at the centre of generative AI discourse. This paper reports findings from a study exploring educators’ emotional responses to the integration of generative AI and higher education. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 multidisciplinary faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga (26% response rate). We first describe the data collection process, including an overview of the institutional context. We then outline a historical context to frame our examination of educators’ self-reported emotional responses to teaching, learning, and living with generative AI. Most respondents expressed ambivalence of some variety, and we noted disciplinary patterns regarding the type of fears and excitements respondents reported. The paper concludes with two pedagogical provocations.