The Augmented Human and the Future of EducA(I)tion

Abstract

Given recent developments in technological advances (chatbots in particular) and, by extension, the gravitational pull to utilize technology (also AI-driven educational technology) in education, a need arises to reconceptualize the most fundamental assumptions and understandings of education itself. This also involves questioning (and possibly even redefining) our humanity and human-ness. I am thinking along the lines of both critical posthumanism and transhumanism. Education hereto meant leading the subject (student, pupil) into humanity and being fully human (Snaza, 2013). But does this definition need reform, and if so, how? Several other questions arise from here: what will happen when – if – human stops being human, at least in the sense understood until today? Will education be defined as something completely different? Will it, say, side-track the foundational role of teachers, schools, curricula, socialization, etc., contrary to the understanding that education means human relationships between teachers and students (Knox, 2019)? To these dilemmas, I offer the following lines of thought that do not lead either to unproductive technophobia nor to critiquless euphoria. It is maybe (high) time to think about changing the categories, concepts, and our use of language to describe AI-related issues. I suggest two moves to start with: (1) a move away from anthropocentrism, both in language and concepts, (a) to include non-human entities and (b) to name the hereto unknown and “unconceptualized” phenomena, and (2) a move away from thinking about AI as merely automaton and task substitution agent, and from “injecting” it (Susskind, 2025) into the current ways of going about our business, with the aim for AI to replicate humans’ (in our case teachers’) work. And, as for education, the use of technology transforms both people and their experiences (Jamison and Haraway, 1992); it may be that digitally transmitted experiences differ from live experiences (i.e., teacher-pupil interactions), so that would require special attention, plus raising awareness regarding emergent hierarchies, most importantly featuring those whose capacities are enhanced by various technologies and those who are not “improved” in that way.