Taking Ethics Seriously

When AI entered education, resistance took two distinct forms. The predictable objections described in Chapter 1 focused on education’s core mission. But a second kind of critique emerged from unexpected quarters: faculty members who understood AI’s technical capabilities yet refused to embrace it. Their opposition had nothing to do with disruptions to traditional pedagogy. Instead, they spoke of Congolese children mining cobalt for data centers, of water-scarce regions sacrificing resources for server cooling, and of surveillance systems disguised as educational tools. These critics saw AI not as a neutral technology but as the product of extractive economies and corporate power structures incompatible with educational values. This chapter takes their concerns seriously, navigating between overly enthusiastic technological utopianism and wholesale rejection to find an ethical and pragmatic path forward. The uncomfortable truths about AI’s origins need not determine its educational future but ignoring them serves neither honesty nor our students.