AI, Quantification, and Pedagogy

Educational technology, as well as artificial intelligence used in the classroom, are private, corporatized technology purchased and implemented by higher education institutions for instructional purposes. These technological forms should be understood as a form of biopolitics by working to quantify, categorize and control those who are subject to its power. EdTech makes unilateral decisions about the content and focus of classes through its technological forms. This represents a form of technological rationality, following Marcuse, which serves to determine the ways in which we can understand our place within the educational system. Appealing to the liberatory pedagogy of Paulo Freire and others provides for an alternative, avoiding the difficulties of Marcuse and creating an alternative vision of classroom pedagogy.