Why Are We Scared of Living With AI? Faculty Panel Takes Up Question for Halloween

Rachel Debuque, director of the School of Art, said the arts have a particular job to do when a technology arrives this quickly. 

"Artists bring a unique perspective to reimagining how tools function," Debuque said. "Emerging technologies offer artists a voice in shaping how these tools affect our lives. That is central to an art school's work in promoting access to leading research, such as the work happening in Nadia's lab, which first began as part of a faculty fellowship at the School of Art promoting access in the arts."  

Debuque said the panel also reflects the School of Art's part in the university's broader plans. The Reaching Higher phase of the 150 Forward strategic plan, announced by Chancellor Charles Robinson in August, sets a goal for every undergraduate to graduate with AI literacy.  

"We want students to understand how to use these technologies while also using their critical thinking skills to analyze their roles in our spaces. Our students do this kind of questioning in classrooms and studios, and this panel invites the whole campus to do it with us." 

The moderators will guide the panel through three themes: how AI is changing creative practice and teaching, how people relate to machines built to connect with them, and what machine-made content means for news and public trust. Audience questions will follow. 

This panel is the second in a series that TESL opened in February with "Why Are We Scared of AI-Generated Images?," a conversation on the ethics of machine-made imagery presented with the Center for Media Ethics and Literacy in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. That event drew one of the lab's largest audiences, and the title's question became a template: each panel starts from a fear people already have and asks what it reveals, rather than trying to argue them out of it. Where the first panel looked at a single kind of output, the images, this one widens the frame to what it means to work, learn and build relationships alongside systems that act on their own. 

Meet the Panelists 

Edmund Harriss is an assistant professor of mathematical sciences whose work sits where geometry meets art as a dual appointment position between arts and sciences and mathematics. He studies tilings and patterns and turns abstract structure into things people can see and hold, using drawing, sculpture and digital fabrication tools such as CNC routers, 3D printers and plasma cutters. His discoveries include the Harriss spiral, a fractal curve built from the plastic ratio, and Curvahedra, a construction system that makes curved forms from flat pieces; a spherical steel Curvahedra sculpture built with honors students stands in the Gearhart Hall courtyard. With writer Alex Bellos, he created the mathematical coloring books Patterns of the Universe and Visions of the Universe, and, in 2024, he shared the Forge Prize with U of A architecture and art colleagues for Mile Zero, a steel shade structure at Kessler Mountain Regional Park. He holds a doctorate from Imperial College London. 

Justin Plakas is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice combines digital technologies with handcrafted processes to create immersive works examining perception, memory and the ways contemporary life is shaped by rapidly evolving technologies. Humor is a defining element of his work, serving as an invitation into playful and often absurd experiences that explore impermanence, entropy, mortality and the contradictions of contemporary life. Balancing wit with reflection, Plakas transforms everyday objects, images and experiences into works that are simultaneously entertaining, unsettling and deeply human. His work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, and he has participated in artist residencies including the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Plakas earned his M.F.A. from the University of Georgia and is currently an assistant professor of studio art in experimental media at the School of Art. 

Aaron Knochel is an endowed professor and program director of art education in the School of Art. His research examines how art and design education intersects with social theory, media studies and technology, from community media production and digital visual culture in K-12 classrooms to makerspaces and 3D-printed assistive devices for children with disabilities. He co-edited Global Media Arts Education and Critical Digital Making in Art Education, led a National Science Foundation project that took a mobile digital fabrication classroom across Pennsylvania and spent 2022-23 as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in digital culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. His recent work turns to generative AI, including a 2023 article in Studies in Art Education on the emerging field of synthography and a 2027 symposium he is co-organizing at Penn State on AI in art and design. He describes his current interest as pedagogies of critical co-creation with AI. He holds a doctorate in art education from Ohio State University. 

Gaby Hernández is an endowed associate professor of graphic design in the School of Art. A social designer and design researcher born in Costa Rica, she studies how heritage, cultural identity and memory can be brought into the design classroom and how visual storytelling can include people from marginalized cultures, drawing on decolonial design theory and long-term collaboration with communities in Mexico and Costa Rica. She founded and directs Story & Material, a multilingual design research and making initiative based in the School of Art and has served on the AIGA National Design Educators Board and AIGA's diversity, equity and inclusion task force. Her teaching rethinks the traditional studio critique so that students work as collaborators rather than subjects. She joined the U of A in 2021 from the University of Florida, where she earned her M.F.A. in graphic design. 

Marco Dehnert is an assistant professor of communication and technology in the Department of Communication and director of the AI and Robots for Connection Lab, which studies how social robots, AI companions and virtual reality affect human connection. His research looks at romantic relationships with companion apps, breakups with AI partners, "griefbots" trained on the data of people who have died and persuasion by AI. His 2022 article in Human Communication Research argued that persuasion theory has to be rethought for AI-generated messages, and his work has been covered by BBC Science Focus, NPR's Marketplace and The Atlantic. He joined the U of A in 2024 and holds master's and doctoral degrees in human communication from Arizona State University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Tübingen in Germany. His lab, housed in the Center for Communication Research in Kimpel Hall, keeps more than a dozen social robots.   

Ginger Blackstone is an associate professor in broadcast and multimedia news, storytelling and promotion at the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. She spent 19 years in broadcast news, including about 13 at CNN and HLN as a producer and executive producer, and worked at local stations including KTHV in Little Rock and KHBS/KHOG in Fort Smith; coverage she was part of earned an Emmy, two Peabody Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award and a duPont-Columbia Award. Her research asks how television and social media frame the news. Her doctoral dissertation, "The Worst of Times," measured the prevalence and power of fear in television news and won the Broadcast Education Association's Kenneth Harwood Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2017. She holds a bachelor's degree from Harding University, a master's degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Florida. 

Ninette Sosa is an assistant professor of practice and associate director of outreach at the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. A native of Guatemala, she has spent nearly three decades in radio, print and television, is a certified war correspondent, has reported live from natural disasters and has had work air on CNN, the BBC and Voice of America. She joined the U of A faculty in 2021, advises the student chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and served as NAHJ's Region 5 director for Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. In 2025 NAHJ honored her with its ¡Dale! Award for leadership. She edited the open textbook Ethics in Journalism and Strategic Media and holds a master's degree from the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, with a documentary film focus, and a bachelor's in sociology from San Diego State University. 

Meet the Moderators 

Nadia Issa is a teaching assistant professor of graphic design in the School of Art and the founder and director of the Technology Empowered Storytelling Lab. A photographer, multimedia artist and designer, she holds a doctorate in visual arts and a master's in media art from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland, and joined the U of A in 2022. Her creative work examines how symbols and archetypes shape personal and collective identity; her doctoral project, "Mythosphere," paired an interactive, video-mapped installation with a series of cinemagraphs on heroic archetypes and contemporary masculinity. She leads concept and art direction for ELARA 0.1, a virtual reality environment for emotional regulation developed with Walton College researchers Tamara Roth and Zach Steelman, and she is part of a 2026 School of Art Faculty Fellowship to build a biometric-adaptive version of the project. 

Christopher Spencer is associate director of marketing and communications for the College of Engineering and a master's candidate in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. A south Arkansas native, he spent about a decade as a reporter for the El Dorado News-Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas before founding Ozarks Unbound, a hyperlocal news site covering the region, in 2009. Arkansas Business named him its Innovator of the Month in 2011 for that work. He joined the university later that year as a content strategist in University Relations and went on to lead marketing and strategic communications for University Housing for a decade. A TESL fellow since the lab's launch, he co-moderated its February panel on AI-generated images. 

About the Technology-Empowered Storytelling Lab: The Technology-Empowered Storytelling Lab, or TESL, at the University of Arkansas School of Art explores how emerging technologies shape the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. TESL connects students, faculty and community partners to experiment with AI, AR/VR and other digital tools that expand creative expression and cultural understanding, advancing inclusive access to storytelling technologies and preserving non-dominant narratives through research, mentorship and collaboration. Follow TESL on Instagram at @tesl.lab to see current projects and upcoming events.