Whose Words Are They? Authorship in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In this chapter, we draw on Pennycook to explore the construction of the author, from birth to death, from two predominant Western theoretical perspectives: the modern and the postmodern. This undertaking allows for the exploration and identification of how faultlines between these historically conflicting understandings of authorship are challenged or reinforced in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Given the longstanding ubiquity of machine translation (MT) tool usage in the language classroom, this exploration centers machine translation platforms as a foundation from which to then consider the implications of these faultlines for other AI language tools, particularly emerging generative AI technologies. More specifically, we illustrate these faultlines with excerpts from our on-going research project into how MT and other artificial intelligence-driven language technologies impact the teaching and learning of world languages. Overall, the exploration reveals the limits of modernist assumptions of authorship and the potential contributions of a postmodern perspective to the development of critical approaches to the use of MT and generative AI technologies to support language learning. We conclude with implications that include and extend beyond the digital tools themselves, as the identified faultlines point to the need to engage with broader considerations of the act of writing, knowledge production in the language classroom, and supporting agentive uses of digital tools to engage with meaning-making processes.