Abstract
The emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought with it a reemergence of utopian and dystopian claims of the grand power of AI. Yet, AI has failed to achieve such lofty expectations and instead has trended toward far more banal, yet productive, tasks and goals. We argue that this mundanity is precisely what makes AI an important technology, and moreover, those “mundane tasks” are central to communication education. Specifically, we advocate for a decreased focus on the hyped ideas of AI that dominate popular discourse and obfuscate more reasoned analyses of AI as communication technology. A more pragmatic focus should directly engage the mundanity of AI as an increasingly normalized communication tool used by people for myriad communication goals, and the extent to which this usage is competent.
DOI
10.31446/JCP.2026.1.16
Author ORCID Identifier
David Westerman: 0000-0001-9550-0304
Nicholas D. Bowman: 0000-0001-5594-9713
Recommended Citation
Westerman, D., & Bowman, N. D. (2026). The mundanity of AI. Journal of Communication Pedagogy, 10, 165–170. https://doi.org/10.31446/JCP.2026.1.16
