Weathering the Rhetorical Climates of AI

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21307810
AutoresDustin Edwards (0000-0001-6409-8041, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen77
Número1
Páginas13-38
Fecha de publicación2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCollege Composition and Communication (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-096X • E-ISSN: 1939-9006
EditorialNational Council of Teachers of English (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.58680/ccc202577113
OpenAlexW7116118005
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas19

In a relatively short time, market and political forces have intensified the reach of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has become, in a word, climatic—not only a discrete technological system but also a creeping assemblage of ideological, material, and political forces. This article tracks these forces by developing rhetorical climates of AI as a conceptual framework. In doing so, I aim to (1) link the harms of climate change with the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure and (2) shift the frame of the conversation by emphasizing the extractive, exploitative, enclosed, and knotted supremacist conditions that have been prerequisites for building AI systems at scale. While these pervading rhetorical climates may seem unchangeable, I track how microclimates of resistance have developed, in the past and in the present. In particular, I emphasize the importance of bodily intelligence in navigating asymmetrical conditions of power felt in the AI industry. The article concludes by discussing how rhetoric and writing studies can weather the unfolding rhetorical climates of AI by diagnosing conditions, seizing moments, and plotting futures to imagine a less extractive and less harmful world

Conversation · Frame (networking) · Futures contract · Politics · Power (physics) · Resistance (ecology) · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Digital Education and Society · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Rhetoric and Communication Studies