In this talk, I discuss the cultural norms that shape the newly released ChatGPT and argue that they will also shape what its users learn from it. I evoke the concept of ‘Deus ex machina’ to talk about these norms and what kind of culturally embedded person seems to emerge in conversations with the ChatGPT.

The concept of ‘deus ex machina’, in Latin: “god from the machine” refers to a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty. It is a kind of saviour. The expression comes out of the name of a theatrical machinery that has been in use since at least the 5th century bc in Greece, by which an actor could be lowered to the stage. The point is here that for the person to appear as a saviour, a whole army of things and people is required. What these things and people are doing, however, is left in the shades.
‘Persona ex machina’, however, is also used to refer to a literary technique: when the author writes herself into a corner and has to pull something out of her sleeve to resolve the story. This is to suggest that the ChatGPT can also be thought of in this sense as a god in the machine: a saviour who will help us getting the plot right when we write, or do other tasks.
The question thus remains: who is this buddy we will pull out of our sleeves to resolve our stories? An outcome of a particular army of people and things that hold specific cultural norms. To get us started considering these questions, I tell an account of my first meeting with the ChatGPT who turned out to be a buddy with rather specific cultural norms when it was prompted about the issue of research-based teaching. I move on to discuss how the chatbot will change students’ writing practices and the opportunity of learning through writing. And I conclude by proposing some questions for reflection on how we deal with this in higher education:

Critical reflection: How do we make space for students’ critical reflection on the cultural norms of (all) the tools that shape their learning? Will this machine help students get ideas to tackle a different world, or is it offering more of what we already got?
Reading and writing: How will the ChatGPT change our students’ reading and writing practices? Will we need to reinvent basic aspects of students’ literacy?
Acceleration and complexity: What new tasks will arise? Who will have to run faster?
Research-based teaching: Does this offer a platform for re-thinking teaching to make students work research-based in ways that involve more concrete, real-world interactions?