Conference Program

Generative AI is rapidly entering language classrooms, including Ancient Greek, where its apparent fluency can tempt learners (and institutions) to outsource philological judgment. This paper argues that AI should be treated not as a neutral aid but as sociotechnical agency whose computational logics can reorganize educational life around efficiency, predictability, and the production of “one-best” answers. Drawing on Illich’s analysis of “two watersheds” and radical monopoly, we hypothesize that educational AI may cross a threshold beyond which tools cease to support autonomy and instead generate dependency and epistemic homogenization. In parallel, Freire’s pedagogy of autonomy frames learning as ethical self-formation through repeated, responsible decisions, precisely the kind of decisions demanded by Ancient Greek parsing and translation.

We introduce Convivial Threshold Design for Ancient Greek (CTD‑GR), a design-oriented intervention translating non-directive pedagogy into implementable didactics. CTD‑GR operationalizes three methodological aims – co-construction of knowledge, critical examination of algorithmic and cognitive bias, and dialectical argumentation as democratic competence – through a minimal activity architecture:

(1) Threshold Mapping: teacher and students identify tasks where AI assistance becomes dependency (e.g., full translations, ready-made commentaries, automated morphology) and set “convivial limits” that preserve core human competences (parsing, reasoning about ambiguity, evidence-based justification).

(2) Textual Co‑translation Workshops: small groups produce parallel translations of a shared Greek passage, documenting alternative construals (case/tense/aspect, participial scope, particles, word order). AI may be queried only to generate contestable hypotheses (“possible readings”), which are then argued for or rejected through reference to grammars, lexica, and the Greek text itself.

(3) Bias Audits on AI Glosses and Explanations: learners test AI-generated glosses, morphological parses, and cultural explanations under prompt variation, explicitly searching for (a) systemic bias (cultural frames and canon formation), (b) computational/statistical bias (patterned errors, confabulations), and (c) human-cognitive bias (over-trust in plausible outputs). Findings are recorded in an “error-and-evidence log” that becomes a shared class resource.

CTD‑GR culminates in a collectively negotiated “convivial use agreement” for Greek study –transparent, revisable, and aligned with assessment that rewards traceable reasoning over polished output. Expected democratic outcomes include autonomy in tool-use decisions, epistemic plurality in interpretation, reflective judgment (phronesis), and dialogical agency sustained by dialectical argumentation.