Deschooling AI

Fri 15 March 2024

(Abstract for a chapter which will appear in 'The Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Education', published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2025)

This chapter will argue that education is vulnerable to capture by AI because it has already been made machinic. Neoliberalism has shaped education to be standardised, optimised and scalable, a trajectory that exactly matches the values encoded in machine learning[1]. Moreover, the adoption of AI will widen the gap between education and the cultivation of critical thinking. Rather than simply delivering the 'banking model'[2], AI-driven education enacts speculation based on "the social logic of the derivative"[3]: both teachers and learners will be further enmeshed in systems of predicted future value. At the same time, thanks to generative AI, the very tools that are embraced as a creative renewal of pedagogy[4] will enforce the hyper-normativity sedimented inside transformer and diffusion models.

The shift to AI-driven education is material as well as ideological. Any claim that a crisis in educational provision will be addressed by AI is really a form of ‘shock doctrine’[5], where the sense of world-changing urgency that accompanies technologies such as Large Language Models is used to transform educational systems without democratic debate while transferring power and resources to private corporations[6]. The net result will not only be a massive privatisation and centralisation by the backdoor, but the future dependency of teaching and learning on infrastructures that harm the planet[7]. Pedagogies that aspire to visions of a sustainable future can't be based on technologies such as AI that exponentially undermine it[8].

Despite a rhetoric of personalisation, AI carries forward a fundamentally eugenic agenda. This not only reflects its mathematical roots[9] but its core operations[10] and the cultures that have incubated it[11]. While the collapse in school attendance in countries like the UK is linked to a systemic intolerance for neurodiversity, AI will ramp up a regime where disability is correlated with disposability. The chapter will propose ways for educators to resist AI and embark instead on a reconstruction of the learning apparatus as necessarily relational, critical and convivial.[12].

Dan McQuillan, 14-3-24

  1. Birhane, A., Kalluri, P., Card, D., Agnew, W., Dotan, R., & Bao, M. (2022). The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research (arXiv:2106.15590). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2106.15590 ↩

  2. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group. ↩

  3. Martin, R. (2013). After Economy?: Social Logics of the Derivative. Social Text, 31(1 (114)), 83–106. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1958908 ↩

  4. Anthony, P. (2023, June 9). Embracing the Use of ChatGPT in Education: Understanding the Concerns and Opportunities. E-Learning - University of Kent. https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/learn-tech/2023/06/09/embracing-the-use-of-chatgpt-in-education-understanding-the-concerns-and-opportunities/ ↩

  5. Klein, N. (2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (1st edition). Penguin. ↩

  6. McQuillan, D. (2023). Evidence to House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee inquiry into Large language models. UK Parliament. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/124038/pdf/ ↩

  7. Naughton, J. (2024, March 2). AI’s craving for data is matched only by a runaway thirst for water and energy. The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/02/ais-craving-for-data-is-matched-only-by-a-runaway-thirst-for-water-and-energy ↩

  8. Bailey, B. (2022, August 15). AI Power Consumption Exploding. Semiconductor Engineering. https://semiengineering.com/ai-power-consumption-exploding/ ↩

  9. Clayton, A. (2020, October 28). How Eugenics Shaped Statistics. Nautilus. http://nautil.us/issue/92/frontiers/how-eugenics-shaped-statistics ↩

  10. McQuillan, D. (2022). Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. Bristol University Press, pp85-92. ↩

  11. Torres, É. P. (2023, January 24). Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics. Truthdig. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/nick-bostrom-longtermism-and-the-eternal-return-of-eugenics-2/ ↩

  12. Illich, I. (1995). Deschooling Society (New edition). Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. ↩

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