rtificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have been actively promoted in universities under the guise of efficiency, time optimization, and the fear of missing out or “falling behind.” Advocates for these technologies promise that students can improve their writing, help them “take notes,” or even “give feedback.” However, the adoption of AI technologies is already resulting in the deskilling of students and teachers, along with an exponential increase of cases of fraud and plagiarism. At the same, the uncritical adoption of AI technologies puts scientific integrity, diversity, sustainability, digital sovereignty and democracy at risk. This event has the objective of discussing the harms of the uncritical adoption of AI technologies in education, and calls for action based on a critical AI literacies framework. The conversation will center around the harms for students and lecturers, the responsibilities of universities in responding to these harms, as well as the potential of collective action and agency to resist these harms.
The uncritical adoption of AI technologies in education is not neutral, abstract, or immaterial. This uncritical adoption harms:
- Education and scientific integrity principles.
- Diversity and inclusivity (due to racism, sexism, ableism and the reinforcement of social hierarchies).
- Environmental and biophysical systems (energy, water, infrastructure, the use of land),
- Digital sovereignty and reinforcement of global power relationships.
Four key themes of the lecture and panel:
- Quality of education and student learning: process of deskilling students, fraud and plagiarism cases are on the rise.
- Sustainability and socio-environmental harms: Emissions, land and water use, energy demand, and the scaling effects of AI technologies.
- Coloniality, power, and governance: AI and sustainability frameworks (including SDGs) reproduce global inequalities, and AI often reinforces power asymmetries between the Global North and Global South (often overlooked).
- Institutional responsibility: Contradictory university policies, examination boards that are overworked, and the increasing deskilling realities that teachers face in the classroom. What are universities currently doing?
- Critical AI literacies: A call for action to resist the uncritical adoption of AI technologies in education based on conceptual clarity, slow science, respecting expertise, critical thinking, decoloniality (see Guest et al. 2025).
The event will consist of a public lecture from Dr. Marcela Suarez Estrada, lecturer in Critical Intersectional Perspectives on AI in the School of AI, followed by a panel discussion with:
- Dr. Ileana Camerino, lecturer and head of the Examination Board of the School of AI
- Erica Warndorff (Master student, School of AI)
- Erica Warndorff (Master student, School of AI)
Resources:
- Guest, O., Suarez, M., Müller, B., van Meerkerk, E., Oude Groote Beverborg, A., de Haan, R., Reyes Elizondo, A., Blokpoel, M., Scharfenberg, N., Kleinherenbrink, A., Camerino, I., Woensdregt, M., Monett, D., Brown, J., Avraamidou, L., Alenda-Demoutiez, J., Hermans, F., & van Rooij, I. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17065099
- Suarez, M., Müller, B. C. N., Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, June 12). Critical AI Literacy: Beyond hegemonic perspectives on sustainability. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15677840
- Guest, O., Suarez, M., & van Rooij, I. (2025). Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17786243
