As awareness and use of AI continues expanding more rapidly than critical AI literacy, gaps in public AI literacy are filled by disquieting tropes from fiction, including portrayals of AI technologies as volitional, antagonistic, or heralds of apocalypses. The deliberately anthropomorphic designs of many AI technologies contribute to these powerful and misleading cultural understandings. This talk identifies understanding AI anthropomorphization and cultural tropes as an under-considered component of AI literacy, and explores how intentionally developing student, faculty, and staff understandings of entertainment media’s influence can balance expectations and affective responses to AI and foster more productive discourse surrounding AI adoption.
