‘Help!? My students created an evil AI’: on the irony of speculative methods and design fiction

This article contributes to moving forward current discourses about speculative methods by explaining how they can become critical in practice. It explores how the collaborative construction of speculative technological solutions (in this case relating to AI in education) can reveal an implicit acceptance of restricting imaginaries. In three design fiction workshops, a total of 36 teacher students were given the task to create an AI-powered technical solution to a self-identified and urgent problem in education. These design workshops revealed several interesting ‘ironies’ relevant to both actual technical development as well as speculative methods about technological futures. The ironies include an ‘ironic imitation’ of the discourses and norms that are perceived as surrounding contemporary technology. These workshops further reveal and question discourses about desirable learning, and as such these ironies are productive in illuminating power asymmetries, thereby creating space for important failures, resistances, and disruptions.