AI Meets Civil Discourse — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

As universities across the U.S. seek to deal with protests, polarization, and the presidential election, many have focused on how to foster civil-discourse skills in students. As this tweet (below) from Professor Robert “Robby” George illustrates, civil-discourse programs are popping up across the nation. Of course, UNC has its own version with its School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL).

What Is Civil Discourse?

Since this is an essay about AI, I’ll use an AI-generated answer from Google Search for the definition (Google Search AI collects data from websites on a topic, in this case “civil discourse,” and summarizes the findings):

“Civil discourse” refers to the practice of having respectful and constructive conversations about public issues, where individuals actively listen to opposing viewpoints, express their own ideas clearly, and strive to promote understanding and knowledge expansion, even when there are disagreements, prioritizing civility over personal attacks.

In other words, civil discourse is not about winning an argument but about having a constructive dialogue to learn another person’s views, offer your own, and come to mutual understanding if not agreement.

The Challenges of Fostering Civil-Discourse Skills in Students

There are several pedagogical and logistical obstacles to teaching civil-discourse skills to college undergraduates.

• During civil-discourse exercises, it can be difficult for students to openly express their sincere views on controversial topics such as race, gender, abortion, and immigration, as they may fear how they may be seen by classmates or the professor.
• The number of students needing to be taught is in the thousands (UNC itself has 20,000 undergraduate students), and it’s difficult for a limited number of faculty to scale civil-discourse training to reach every student.
• Scaling the instruction across multiple faculty may mean no standard approach to civil discourse can be instituted across the university.
• Students don’t know how to perform civil discourse, so having them roleplay and provide one another feedback isn’t the best approach.
• Since conversations are practiced orally, the faculty’s ability to assess individual students’ civil-discourse skills uniformly is limited due to time and location constraints, as well as faculty-member fatigue.

Employing AI for Civil Discourse

It’s important that every student who graduates from Carolina be able to have a constructive dialogue with someone with whom they disagree. However, there are the above roadblocks. But, in the fall of 2024, the opportunity arose to take an AI tool used in a “Professional Selling” course and repurpose it for civil discourse.

The sales tool came from a firm called Copient.ai. I used it to teach and test my students on their ability to master a specific selling methodology. It’s a roleplaying tool; the student talks to an AI avatar (see below), and the avatar responds in real time. In the case of the sales tool, the student uses the sales methodology to “sell” the avatar a product.

In previous sales classes, students were put into four-person teams, and they had 30 minutes to “sell” me an offering using the appropriate methodology. With over 100 students, it would take me the whole week to do the assessments. We would have to schedule the teams, find a room, grade the students, etc. It was exhausting.

Ninety-two percent of students thought AI improved their civil-discourse skills. Eighty-eight percent felt it graded them fairly.Using the AI tool, it was possible to do a much better job instilling the sales skills and assessing the students and to do so much more effectively and efficiently. Student feedback was also extremely positive.

Given the success of the tool in a sales “use case,” I wanted to see if it worked for civil discourse and so designed a pilot to try it out.

Working with Copient.ai, we built a new roleplaying scenario for civil discourse, developing a methodology for teaching it. A list of controversial topics to discuss was also created, including topics such as gender and immigration. This was offered to students for extra credit in one of my undergrad courses, and 21 took the opportunity to try it out.

Results of the Pilot

In the pilot, each student had a conversation with the AI six times: three times on the topic of abortion as practice rounds, followed by three times on the subject of affirmative action. Their final conversation on affirmative action was graded. For all their conversations, students could choose to take either the pro or con position on the following statements:

Abortion: “Abortion should be legal at all times during a pregnancy.”

Affirmative Action: “Affirmative Action should be abolished.”

Each student received an overall score for each conversation, as well as a score and feedback for each element of the rubric (see below).

The results were very encouraging. In the practice rounds on abortion, the scores started low but rapidly increased. In the second set of conversations on affirmative action, the scores started high (since students had already practiced on the abortion topic) and went higher.

Students were also positive about the tool. Ninety-two percent thought it improved their civil-discourse skills. Eighty-four percent felt it helped them learn civil discourse. Eighty-eight percent felt it graded them fairly.

Benefits of Using AI 

There are several benefits to using an AI tool for civil discourse and other roleplaying scenarios.

• AI is scalable in terms of number of students and number of practices: AI enables teaching civil discourse to a large cohort of students simultaneously, with the flexibility to offer unlimited practice sessions tailored to their pace and needs.
• AI is measurable for tests and analyses (pre- and post-tests): AI facilitates clear benchmarking and progress tracking through structured assessments, providing data-driven insights into student development over time.
• AI provides detailed feedback: AI gives instant, nuanced feedback on student responses, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement in real time.
• AI leads to significant improvement with practice: Regular practice sessions powered by AI ensure that students develop and refine their skills progressively, leading to measurable gains in civil-discourse abilities.
• Topics and levels of difficulty can be customized for each course or student: AI allows personalized learning by tailoring discussion topics and complexity to match individual course requirements and student proficiency levels.
• AI allows student to speak freely: Because the student is not interacting with a person, he or she can feel freer to express his or her true thoughts and feelings and get feedback on them.
• AI is more reliable than having two students roleplay: AI serves as a more reliable practice partner compared to peers, offering informed, consistent responses and modeling effective constructive discourse.
• AI offers uniform processes and assessment: The use of AI ensures all students follow a standardized methodology, promoting fairness and consistency in learning outcomes.
• AI is asynchronous and can be done at the student’s leisure: Students using AI can engage in practice and learning activities at their own convenience, enabling greater flexibility and accessibility.
• AI leads to positive student feedback: The engaging, supportive, and effective nature of AI-powered learning often results in high levels of satisfaction and enthusiasm among students.

To be sure, instruction in civil discourse using AI is not the last step in the process. Once the student learns how to perform civil discourse using the AI tool, he or she can then take the big step to practicing live with another student and do so with the confidence that comes from the AI-driven experiential learning.

Success may lead to a wider effort to scale this kind of teaching to more students at UNC and perhaps other universities.Next Steps

In preparation for SCiLL’s planned 2025 civil-discourse orientation for first-year students, I will be partnering with Inger Brodey, associate dean of the school, to run a pilot in a few SCiLL courses this semester. If those efforts are successful, it may lead to a wider effort to use AI to scale this kind of teaching to many more students at UNC and perhaps other universities.

Other Uses of AI to Find Common Ground

The AI tool I discussed above is one of several that are becoming available, each with different use cases. Here are some of them.

• Another civil-discourse tool is Sway, which can be used by students to practice civil discourse online instead of by talking to an avatar. Sway facilitates conversations between students but coaches them on how to offer more constructive responses than what they might otherwise say.
• A tool called the Habermas Machine served as a mediator in the UK to help participants find common ground on controversial topics. Per the study, “Compared with human mediators, AI mediators produced more palatable statements that generated wide agreement and left groups less divided.”
• An AI tool called DepolarizingGPT is “a political AI chatbot that gives three answers to every prompt: one from a left-wing perspective, one from a right-wing perspective, and a third answer from a depolarizing or ‘integrating’ perspective.” The depolarizing answer seeks to find a common ground between left and right, thereby reducing polarization.
• Using ChatGPT-4 Turbo, this study found that belief in conspiracy theories could be reduced significantly by having the participant talk with the AI about his or her beliefs.

In sum, new AI tools offer opportunities to foster civil-discourse skills, find common ground, mediate conflict, and depolarize groups. If employed appropriately, AI may help us come together for more productive conversations and increased understanding.

Mark McNeilly is a professor of the practice at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. The views expressed are his own and are not meant to represent the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.