What should an engineering student know about politics and why should computer science students study global governance and collective action? At times of waning interest in liberal arts education alongside a rapid transformation of workplaces and growing demand for technical skills, can we continue to educate scientists and technologists as though technological expertise and political judgment belong to separate domains?
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) makes these questions exponentially more urgent. AI systems are moving rapidly from specialized technological applications into infrastructures for education, employment, healthcare, public administration, security, finance, communication, scientific research, and everyday decision-making. Engineers and computer scientists are invited to make design choices that affect privacy, access, representation, accountability, security, labor, and the distribution of social and economic opportunities. At the same time, technological decisions increasingly intersect with geopolitical competition, national security, regulation, global inequality, corporate power, and questions about democratic authority.
The distinction between building technological systems and governing societies is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
This panel invites theoretical, empirical, comparative, and pedagogical contributions examining why STEM students need to study politics and governance and how the emergence of AI changes or intensifies such a proposition.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
- Why and how political science remains relevant in the age of AI and STEM education
- Engineers and computer scientists as political actors
- Political literacy as technical competency
- STEM in the context of Global North-South development challenges
- Teaching governance and politics through systems thinking
- Experiential approaches to political education in the age of AI
