Generative Artificial Intelligence and Inequalities: The Biographical Approach to the Argentine Youth Experience

This paper aims to study the links between social and digital inequalities and the appropriation of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) by young university students in La Plata, Argentina. After systematizing the state of the art on the intersection between youth and GenAI, a singular methodological strategy will be presented: technobiography. This method, consisting in the application of the biographical approach to the study of the appropriation of digital technologies in a situated way, allows to recover the experience of the subjects in order to reconstruct the meanings that the GenAI acquires in the daily life of young people. What role does the GenAI play in the transition processes between high school and university, in the development of the “students' craft” and in the processes of digital literacy in their university studies? How are traditional university pedagogical modalities incorporated, coexist and compete with the emerging trends towards the platformization of education? How do the digital skills, knowledge and abilities acquired by students in informal settings affect their study practices? How do leisure practices (built around video games, programming, virtual social networks, virtual gambling), new forms of employment and work (linked to the platform economy, trading, cryptocurrencies) and the modalities of learning, evaluation and certification of knowledge in the formal university environment converge and are integrated? The comparative analysis of typical technobiographies of young university students, taking into account social class and gender differences, will allow us to understand the meanings acquired by the GenAI in the critical production of knowledge and how these influence in their strategies of entry, permanence, academic performance and graduation from their university careers and in their professional training.