Of Humans and AI: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Their Encounters and Interactions.

This chapter explores the interplay between AI’s representation in academic literature and its discursive construction by three AI platforms, namely ChatGPT, Gemini, and HuggingChat. These representations influence public perceptions, expectations, and the development and regulation of AI. Employing the methodological frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics, we analyse two datasets: a corpus of 25 academic publications and conference proceedings that explore the conceptualization of AI in research and education, and 16 dialogic exchanges (each consisting of a question and its corresponding answer) conducted with the AI platforms previously mentioned. These questions were specifically crafted to elicit the platforms’ self-perceptions and discursive patterns. The academic corpus reveals a shift from framing AI as a hazard to exploring its potential for independent thought and reasoning. Conversely, the AI-generated corpus demonstrates improvements in logical-abstract reasoning and increasingly natural interactions, with platforms exhibiting critical, balanced self-descriptions influenced by human interlocutors’ tone and phrasing. In conclusion, the discourse generated by academics has recently adopted a more technical and cautious tone and AI is discursively framed as a moral and social agent requiring governance. These findings underscore the need for developers and institutions to control and regulate the empowerment of AI systems before their generative capacities outperform those of their creators.