The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

The Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security

Artificial Infrastructures

Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Principal Investigator: Michael Salvo

Artificial Infrastructures investigates how generative AI is reshaping the work of technical and professional writing across high-technology industries—from image analysis and documentation to medical manufacturing. Building on expert interviews and grounded narrative, Salvo and Sherrill examine the experiences of practitioners who have shaped the development of AI systems and who integrate AI tools into their daily work, illuminating the social, rhetorical, and infrastructural changes that follow. Rather than focusing on dramatic disruptions or utopian promises, Artificial Infrastructures attends to ways AI systems are embedded into workflows and reconfigure expectations for what writing and professional communication entail, arguing for a nuanced understanding of co-writing and machine-in-the-loop systems and offering both a critical lens and practical strategies for navigating a rapidly changing technological landscape. Central to this argument is a recognition that management decisions shape how AI is integrated into the workplace and what labor gets displaced. It is a timely guide for readers confronting the question: What now?

Personnel

Other PIs: John Sherrill, Michigan Technological University

Students: Ean Hunt, CLA Wilke Jefferey Chen, CLA Wilke Eva Braumbauer, CLA Wilke Meagan Hipsky, CLA Wilke

Representative Publications

  • Michael J Salvo and John T Sherrill. 2024. A Research Ensemble of Humans, Machines, and Algorithms: Future Designs of Research and Scholarly Communication. In The 42nd ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC ’24), October 20–22, 2024, Fairfax, VA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641237.3691666

  • Sherrill, John T. & Salvo, Michael J. (2022). Automated Infrastructures: Participation’s Changing Role in Postindustrial Work. Communication Design Quarterly (CDQ), vol. 10, no. 2, Sept. 2022, 22–31, https://doi.org/10.1145/3507857.3507860.

  • Sherrill, John T. & Salvo, Michael J. (2022). Distant Collaborations: Designing for Australia, Ireland, Qatar, and the USA. 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm) Proceedings, IEEE Press, 2022, 154–59. ACM Digital Library, https://doi.org/10.1109/ProComm53155.2022.00031.

  • Salvo, Michael J., and John T. Sherrill (2025). Artificial Infrastructures. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado.

    https://doi.org/1010.37514/PRA-B.B.2025.2654

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, experience architecture, literacy, technical communication, writing