{"id":15919,"date":"2026-04-08T11:07:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T09:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unicollaboration.org\/?p=15919"},"modified":"2026-04-07T09:19:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:19:46","slug":"a-philosophical-approach-to-virtual-exchange-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unicollaboration.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/a-philosophical-approach-to-virtual-exchange-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"“I Am Because of You”: Critical Virtual Exchange in the Age of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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UNICollaboration welcomes back our founding member, Mirjam Hauck, who also works at the Open University<\/strong> in the UK, and is a longtime researcher and practitioner of virtual exchange.<\/p>\n

For the past two years, Mirjam has been active in her new role, as academic lead, responsible for AI in learning, teaching and assessment across the curriculum.<\/strong> A huge job, by her own admission.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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UC: Mirjam, some people are saying that AI will kill virtual exchange. So in your new role as academic lead for AI in learning and teaching at the Open University here in the UK, what do you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck:<\/strong> Well, I think it’s the wrong starting point, if I may be so blunt. I think that the way it’s framed: that AI is likely to kill VE concedes too much.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is because I think it positions AI as an external force that is acting somehow, and is having an impact on virtual exchange.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I think the more interesting and the more urgent question is, what kind of relational ethics do we bring to our encounters with AI? <\/strong>And I think virtual exchange and more specifically, critical virtual exchange is grounded in social justice and inclusion principles. For me, this means it will not just survive AI, but it offers the very framework that we need to engage with AI critically and humanly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Risks and ramifications of using AI in virtual exchange<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

UC:<\/strong> There are concerns, though, that AI will ultimately smooth over the productive friction of intercultural misunderstanding, the pauses, the messiness, the laughter, the negotiation of meaning that makes VE transformative.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck:<\/strong>\u00a0 I would argue that VE has actually always been built on that kind of friction. It doesn’t treat difference as a problem to be resolved. Virtual exchange treats difference as a condition for learning.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And when we bring AI into CVE-designed spaces, we don’t lose that orientation. We guide and we train the learners to bring this approach to their encounters with AI. So, the critical questions that critical virtual exchange practitioners ask of their intercultural partners are along the lines of: Whose perspective is it? Whose voice is missing? What assumptions are being made here? They are exactly the same questions that we need to ask of every AI output.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, what I’m talking about is critical AI literacy, in critical virtual exchange contexts. This needs to be applied to every encounter with AI within these contexts<\/strong>. It’s the same relational ethics, actually, that we are talking about.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The issue of bias and how to deal with it<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

UC:<\/strong> But what about the argument that AI systems encode bias and can reinforce cultural hierarchies? Isn’t that a real risk? And doesn’t that mean that as part of our virtual exchange work, we need to know how the tools work, and question which voices are amplified or marginalised, if not totally silenced?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck:<\/strong> I think these are very sensible safeguards.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I think they stay at the level of implementation. So they treat bias as a flaw that needs to be detected and needs to be managed within a system that is otherwise more or less acceptable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, the critical dimension of critical virtual exchange does actually ask a much harder question. Not just what bias is in the tool. But why does the tool ‘think’ the way it does in the first place?<\/strong> So, because most AI systems are built on assumptions that are individualist – they’re optimising and they are uniform from an epistemological point of view. Therefore, they are designed to produce the best answer for a single user. And to do this efficiently, they draw on a knowledge base that systematically over-represents certain cultural and linguistic traditions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And I don’t think this is an incidental bias that we can correct by carefully using AI. What is needed is a much more fundamental philosophical orientation. It needs a much more philosophically-based approach.
And this is where the work I’ve been recently doing by drawing on ‘Ubuntu’<\/strong>, that relational philosophy that says, ‘I am because of you’. <\/strong>We also find that in Confucian Ren, by the way, that humanness is constituted through relationships. I think that approach can help us.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So\u2026 because they offer us\u00a0 these approaches, they offer us a fundamentally different starting point: knowledge, identity, and judgment. These are all relational things. They’re not individual things. And they are right at the opposite end of the spectrum of this highly individualised and personalised learning that AI, or the promise that AI brings.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What we are talking about in virtual exchange and in critical virtual exchange is that knowledge and wisdom that emerge through encounters with others, through encounters with difference.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When learners encounter AI through a critical virtual exchange-informed and critical AI literacy-informed framework, they’re not just spotting bias in an output. They are guided, and they are encouraged to interrogate the assumptions that are baked into the systems themselves and where they come from. I think that this is a far more robust and transferable form of AI literacy and that VE. Especially critical virtual exchange, which provides the idea of a kind of context and setup for promoting this approach.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The temptations of using AI in teaching and learning<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

UC: But, Mirjam, AI is promising highly personalized learning, like an adaptive tutor who has all the patients in the world and is perfectly calibrated to the learner. That does sound rather tempting, doesn’t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck:<\/strong> It does, and it is, and I’m not saying there is no space for that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But we do know from research on collaborative learning and from research into peer learning, so the kind of learning that happens in virtual exchange, that the story is a slightly different one. So when learners work together across cultural difference, they have opportunities to develop metacognitive awareness, tolerance of ambiguity, and the habit of checking their thinking against someone else’s thinking, and against someone else’s perspective.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

These are exactly the same capacities that make a learner less likely to outsource their thinking to AI.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, personalised AI learning creates what we might call, like, an echo chamber. The ‘echo chamber of one’, which is optimised for your existing preferences, for your individual knowledge gaps. Therefore, there is no structural incentive to challenge any of your assumptions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But encounter with difference, cultural difference, linguistic difference, epistemic difference comes with virtual exchange. In my view, this is the best remedy we have against an unhealthy AI dependency. And the research clearly shows this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is peer learning, it is collaborative learning that builds the critical distance from AI, that highly individualized AI interactions totally erode.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Does AI spell the end for VE?<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

UC: Interesting. So, going back to our original question, is there a real risk that AI will kill virtual exchange in the future, then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck: <\/strong>Well, I think the real risk is that we implement AI without the relational ethics to guide the implementation that should be guiding the implementation. <\/strong>So, Ubuntu says: ‘I am because of you’, my identity, my knowledge, my growth are constituted through my encounter with you, through my encounter with others.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And if we let AI substitute that encounter, rather than making it serve the encounter. We won’t just lose virtual exchange, we’ll be losing something much more fundamental about what education is actually for.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And so, for critical virtual exchange, this relational core is non-negotiable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That’s why it’s not just compatible with AI, I think it is necessary for our encounter with AI.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

UC: That’s been really, really interesting talking to you again, Mirjam, so thank you for that, and a lot of food for thought there. I’m sure our viewers will be very interested in this philosophical discussion that we’ve just had.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck:<\/strong> And thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this, because this is also new for me, so I’m trying to find my feet in that area, and any feedback is, of course.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

UC: Well, yes, if anyone has any feedback, do get in touch with us, and Mirjam, keep in touch regarding any new developments in this respect as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mirjam Hauck<\/strong>: Will do. Thanks, Lorenza. Thank you!<\/p>\n

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UNICollaboration welcomes back our founding member, Mirjam Hauck, who also works at the Open University in the UK, and is a longtime researcher and practitioner of virtual exchange. For the past two years, Mirjam has been active in her new role, as academic lead, responsible for AI in learning, teaching Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8275,"featured_media":14598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1030],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n"I Am Because of You": Critical Virtual Exchange in the Age of AI - UNICollaboration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Professor Mirjam Hauck argues that the use of AI in virtual exchange provides the ideal framework for critical thinking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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