DH- AI Bias: NotebookLM Activity

Lab Session: DH- AI Bias NotebookLM Activity

This blog is based on the Digital Humanities Lab Activity titled AI Bias NotebookLM, assigned by Professor Dilip P. Barad. In this activity, participants examined how generative AI models display different forms of bias and how these biases influence literary interpretation. The lab involved creating a mindmap, taking a bias quiz, watching an explanatory video, consulting a source guide, and preparing a studio report each component offering practical insight. Through feminist, postcolonial, and political frameworks, the activity showed that AI systems often reproduce gendered, cultural, and ideological biases present in their training data, and that intentional filtering can further strengthen dominant narratives. Overall, the session highlighted the need for critical thinking, consistent cultural evaluation, and the active inclusion of diverse narratives to build a more equitable digital knowledge landscape.

A.I. Bias (Summary from video)

The video gives an in-depth exploration of AI bias, particularly how artificial intelligence systems inherit and reproduce biases present in their training data, which are largely created by humans and reflect societal prejudices. AI bias arises because AI models are trained on massive datasets sourced predominantly from dominant cultures, mainstream voices, and standard English registers. These datasets often mirror existing societal inequalities, such as gender, racial, political, and cultural biases, which AI then perpetuates.

For example, the video highlights gender bias in AI where AI-generated stories often default to male protagonists in scientific roles unless explicitly directed otherwise. This reflects patriarchal traditions embedded in the training data, paralleling feminist critiques like Gilbert and Gubar’s "mad woman in the attic" theory, which discusses how women’s voices are distorted or silenced. Similarly, racial bias is evident as AI systems tend to favor Eurocentric beauty standards and whiteness as default, while struggling to accurately represent or recognize marginalized groups, as shown by studies like Timnit Gebru’s work on gender classification error rates being disproportionately high for dark-skinned women.

Political bias is also discussed, with AI tools like DeepSeek demonstrating censorship or deliberate omission of politically sensitive topics (e.g., the Tiananmen Square incident), reflecting the influence of the geopolitical context and the controlling interests behind the AI platforms. This contrasts with more liberal platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which tend to provide more open responses but still face criticism for perceived ideological biases.

The video emphasizes that AI bias is not merely a technical flaw but a reflection of human unconscious biases, mental preconditioning, and the socio-cultural context embedded within the data. Bias in AI is inevitable because no human or AI can be completely neutral; the critical question is identifying when bias becomes harmful specifically when it privileges dominant groups and marginalizes others.

To address AI bias, the speaker suggests awareness and critical engagement: recognizing biases exist, thinking critically about data and evidence, challenging assumptions and traditions, and embracing diverse perspectives. Importantly, the video stresses the need for more inclusive data representation, encouraging marginalized communities to actively contribute digital content to diversify AI training datasets and counteract epistemological dominance.

In conclusion, AI bias stems from the human origin of data and societal structures it reflects. While complete neutrality is impossible, making biases visible and subjecting them to critique using literary theories, critical race theory, feminist criticism, and other frameworks can help mitigate harmful effects. The session advocates for a conscious, critical approach to AI use and development, promoting fairness, representation, and continuous scrutiny of AI outputs within their cultural and political contexts.

Self and space, resistance and discipline: a Foucauldian reading of George Orwell's 1984  (Article taken for the activity)

This article, "Space, Discipline, and Resistance in Orwell's '1984'," provides an examination of the theoretical implications of space, resistance, and discipline as manifested in George Orwell's novel.

The central purpose of the paper is neither to provide a strict Foucauldian reading nor an Orwellian validation of Foucault's theories, but rather to merge Orwell's fictive dystopia and Foucault's workings of power to identify themes relevant to broader concepts of resistance, discipline, and space. The analysis draws on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault to detail how the spatial and temporal control of everyday activities serves to discipline spaces within a totalitarian society. The paper contributes to the fields of resistance geographies and fictive geographies, suggesting that '1984' may be read not just as a warning against totalitarian systems, but also to understand spaces of resistance and discipline.

Context and Premise of '1984'

Orwell's 1984, published after the Second World War, remains relevant in the twenty-first century due to its concerns regarding the abuse of power, the denial of self, and the eradication of the past and future. The novel is a significant political text, and terms such as "Thought Police" and "Big Brother" have entered the general vocabulary. The author, George Orwell, was a socialist who wrote against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, intending his work to address the core problem of how to prevent power from being abused.

The novel presents a dystopian world set in Oceania, where the state is the ultimate source of power, and all individuality has been criminalized. The totalitarian system is manifest in the control of thought, destruction of memory/history, and the debasement of language. The protagonist, Winston Smith, an educated worker in the Outer Party, lives under extreme surveillance. Other key characters include O'Brien (Inner Party member who betrays Winston) and Julia (a pragmatic secret rebel).

Discipline and Surveillance

The paper uses Foucault's concept of a "political economy of the body," arguing that power relations immediately hold and train the body. Within 1984, all aspects of life are regimented. Party members are spatially separated, sequestered into enclosed spaces, and kept unaware of the totality of the system.

The telescreen is the major apparatus of surveillance and discipline, capable of receiving and transmitting simultaneously. Since there is "no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment," this randomness generates uncertainty and paranoia. Discipline extends beyond physical movements to facial expressions (known as facecrime) and thoughts (Thoughtcrime).

Crucially, the discipline within 1984 is classed. O'Brien, an Inner Party member, is able to turn off his telescreen a revelation to Outer Party members Winston and Julia, demonstrating that the instrument of disciplinary control is unequal. Furthermore, the Party maintains power through the complete control of knowledge and information; the ability to erase a person's history (to "vaporize" them) is considered "more terrifying than mere torture and death".

The Nature of Power

Winston attempts to understand the Party's system, writing in his diary: "I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY". During his interrogation, O'Brien explains the ultimate motive of the Party: "The object of power is power." O'Brien asserts that power is not a means but an end, sought entirely for its own sake. This Orwellian conception of power as something to be possessed by a minority faction is noted as discordant with Foucault’s view of power as something universal, exercised as a social relation, and not a privilege of the dominant class.

Spaces of Resistance

Despite the totalitarian control, the article argues that Orwell provides spaces for resistance, concurring with Foucault's proposition that "where there is power, there is resistance". Resistance is effective when directed at the techniques of power rather than power in general. For Winston, resistance is about retaining a semblance of humanity and individuality, moving toward personal liberation rather than immediate revolution.

Examples of resistance located in the "minutia of the everyday" include:

1. Spatial Manipulation: Winston exploits the "unusual geography" of his room, sitting in an alcove to remain outside the telescreen’s field of vision.
2. Bodily Control: Winston deliberately affects his appearance, wearing "the expression of quiet optimism" when facing the telescreen.
3. Physical/Sexual Acts (Julia): Julia’s resistance is practical and physical. Her sexual relations with Winston are a blow struck against the Party and a political act, given the Party’s aim to eradicate the sex instinct.

The Ultimate Act of Resistance

Although Winston is ultimately defeated and capitulates to Big Brother, the most significant act of resistance, the paper argues, is found in the diary and the act of writing itself. Winston wrote for "the future, for the unborn" to keep the human heritage intact and "stay sane".

The paper suggests a transposition: Winston embodies Orwell, who was also writing feverishly while dying (from tuberculosis) to finish his warning against State repression. The act of writing a production of knowledge for Orwell/Winston was itself a form of resistance. Therefore, the novel 1984 serves as a constructive suggestion because the message remains. By reading the novel, the audience engages with the warning, making the readership itself an act of resistance towards future disciplinary procedures.

Analogously, if totalitarian discipline is a dense, inescapable net woven across society, then acts of resistance from turning one's back to a telescreen to writing a secret diary are like discovering the tiny, unseen holes between the threads where one can momentarily breathe or pass a message through to the future.

Quiz Activity

This quiz is also made by NotebookLm from the article on Orwell's 1984 summarized above... 

Mind Map Activity

This Mindmap is created by NotebookLm with understanding the concepts in the article given to it on Orwell's 1984, It gives the thorough reading of key concepts explained in the article...

Report Activity: Blog Post- Rethinking 1984: Five Surprising Ways Orwell Redefined Resistance

For over seventy years, George Orwell's 1984 has served as our culture's ultimate symbol for a dystopian future. Its very name evokes a "nightmarish vision of totalitarianism," a world of constant surveillance where "Big Brother is watching you" and the "Thought Police" punish dissent before it can even be spoken. This reading is powerful and correct, yet it often misses a deeper, more complex layer of the novel.

A closer look, guided by scholarly analysis, reveals that 1984 is more than just a bleak warning. It is a profound meditation on the production of knowledge and the preservation of the self against a system designed to dismantle both. This article explores five counter-intuitive takeaways from 1984 that redefine the concept of resistance, moving beyond overt revolution to the subtle, personal acts of defiance that sustain humanity in the face of overwhelming power.

1. Control Isn't Just Watching- It's About Where You Are

The ever-present telescreen is the most iconic symbol of the Party's control, but its power is a distraction from a more insidious mechanism. The regime's true strength lies in what political theorist Michel Foucault would call a "micro-physics" of power: the "spatial and temporal control of everyday activities." This is a form of discipline that works on the body, training it to be docile by dictating where citizens can be, when they can be there, and what they can do with their time.

This totalizing control gave rise to a new crime, captured by the Newspeak word ownlife, which meant "individualism and eccentricity." Even the simple act of taking a solitary walk was considered deeply suspicious because it represented an unsanctioned use of personal space and time. This technique of control is designed to make rebellion not just illegal, but physically and mentally inconceivable by preventing the very "knowledge" of a private self from forming.

In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations; to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous.

2. The Two Faces of Rebellion: The Idealist and the Pragmatist

Resistance in 1984 is not a monolithic concept; it is embodied by the starkly different approaches of its two main characters, Winston and Julia. Winston's rebellion is idealistic and intellectual. He is obsessed with the grand question of "Why?" and seeks to understand the Party's ultimate motives, driven by a desire for large-scale, systemic change.

Julia, in contrast, represents a worldview that is "decidedly realistic and pragmatic." Her resistance is not ideological but corporeal a form of embodied, non-intellectual knowledge. She understands that to survive, one must perform conformity perfectly. As she explains, "Always yell with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe." This outward loyalty creates the space for her private rebellion: breaking the rules for her own freedom and enjoyment. Her philosophy is brutally simple: "The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same."

Their love affair, and especially Julia's flagrant sexuality, is framed not just as a personal transgression but as a direct political act against a regime bent on eradicating desire.

Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

This contrast reveals that resistance isn't a single act but a spectrum of behaviors, from grand ideological stands to the intensely personal defiance of one’s own body.

3. Power Isn't a Means to an End- It Is the End

Winston Smith's central intellectual struggle is not understanding how the Party maintains its grip on reality, but a more terrifying question he "had never clearly understood"- why. He assumes there must be some twisted rationale, a goal like the betterment of society or the security of its people.

The chilling answer is delivered by Inner Party member O'Brien during Winston's torture. The Party does not seek power for wealth, luxury, or the good of the masses. It seeks power purely for its own sake.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power … Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

This revelation is horrifying not just for its sadism, but for its theoretical implications. O'Brien's vision of power as a finite thing to be possessed is "clearly discordant with Foucault's conception of power" as a relational force that flows through society. Orwell depicts a primitive, absolute form of domination that modern theory has moved beyond, making the Party’s motivation a uniquely terrifying lust for pure, irrational control.

4. The Man Behind the Character: Winston's Struggle was Orwell's

To fully grasp the novel's message, we must look at the man behind the page. Orwell's writing is "partly historical, partly autobiographical," shaped by definitive life experiences. His time as a colonial officer in Burma gave him an intimate understanding of abusive authority; fighting in the Spanish Civil War exposed him to ideological brutality; and his work at the BBC, producing wartime propaganda, directly mirrored Winston's job altering records at the Ministry of Truth.

These experiences shaped him into what he called a "revolutionary" writer. He drew a sharp distinction between the "moralist" (like Dickens, whose message is "If men would behave decently the world would be decent") and the revolutionary, who seeks to overturn the system itself. Orwell saw himself as the latter, stating his explicit purpose:

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

Crucially, Orwell wrote 1984 while he was dying of tuberculosis. "Orwell's awareness that death was approaching intensified his emotions and heightened his powers of expression." Winston's desperate struggle to record the truth becomes a direct reflection of Orwell's own race against time to finish his final, urgent, and revolutionary act.

5. The Ultimate Victory: The Novel Itself is the Final Act of Resistance

The common reading of 1984 is that its ending is one of "total bleakness." Winston is broken, his spirit extinguished as he learns to love Big Brother. Yet a more profound interpretation turns this conclusion on its head.

The most significant act of resistance in the story is Winston's diary. This act is a direct metaphor for Orwell writing the novel 1984. Both men were locked in a race against death: "Orwell knew he was dying, just as Winston understood that his days also were numbered." Each was desperate to complete one final, crucial act of communication a message sent to an unknown future.

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free … greetings!

In this reading, Winston's mission was not a failure. As the source analysis argues, "Winston does succeed because his message remains." We, the readers of 1984, are the future that Winston was writing for. The survival and enduring relevance of the novel is the ultimate triumph. By reading his warning, we ensure the "human heritage" was carried on. In this way, "we come to embody Winston/Orwell and the readership of 1984 becomes the Brotherhood."

Conclusion: A Legacy of Staying Sane

These five points transform 1984 from a story of inevitable defeat into a complex handbook on how humanity endures. Resistance is not just a single, grand act of revolution. It is found in exploiting the flaws of a "micro-physics" of spatial control; it is expressed in the embodied, corporeal knowledge of a secret love affair; and it is immortalized in the "production of knowledge" through the simple, desperate act of writing.

The novel’s true message is that staying sane and preserving the self are the ultimate forms of defiance. Orwell's final, revolutionary act was to pass his knowledge to us, proving that a voice, once recorded, can outlast any regime.

If, as Orwell suggests, the most powerful resistance is simply "staying sane" and passing on the truth, what does that mean for us in a world saturated with information?

Video Activity

https://youtu.be/NrIATNmnfkg

References:

Google. NotebookLM. notebooklm.google.com.

“Mindmap Overview of AI Bias NotebookLM Activity.” YouTube, uploaded by [youTube channel name if known], [date of upload if known], www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1DKWMOeZ7Y.

Tyner, James A. “Self and Space, Resistance and Discipline: A Foucauldian Reading of George Orwell’s 1984.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 5, no. 1, 2004, pp. 129-149. doi:10.1080/1464936032000137966.