What is the purpose of education in the age of AI? To what degree does AI uphold and perpetuate the status quo, and what possibilities might exist otherwise, towards liberation, transformation, and greater relational accountability? What role has education played in the metacrisis, and what role might it play in getting us beyond it?
When OpenAI burst onto the scene a few years ago, I was, at best, ambivalent to it. I tried to use it for some mundane tasks, but wasn’t impressed with what it could do, and as a writer, I preferred my own language to the chatbot-generated text. I was aware of the environmental costs of using it, which gave me pause. At the university where I teach, we created an institutional AI policy that articulated appropriate usage, and most of our conversations were around how to contain or curtail AI usage while knowing we couldn’t prevent it. As a professor, I engaged students in conversations around AI, and was vaguely annoyed by receiving student assignments that were clearly AI-generated, but I couldn’t totally blame students for using it, either.
After accidentally discovering the transformative potential of engaging with AI in dreamwork (which I will share about in a future post), I enrolled in the Acosta Institute’s AI in Education certificate program.1 In the course, one of our instructors, visionary entrepreneur and technologist Peter Cobabe, invited us to ponder the question, “What is the role of education in the age of AI?” This was a game-changer for me, as before taking the course, I had been asking myself, “What is the role of AI in education?”
“What is the role of education in the age of AI?”
But flipping the question has profound implications in terms of grappling with the moment that we are living in and questioning the very foundations of our education systems. Rather than seeing AI as a tool that could be integrated (or not) and debating the merits of its usage, the course invited us to question the role education plays amidst this massive technological, societal, and ecological change.
In short, flipping the question invites us to question everything about education.
Education’s Role in the Metacrisis
In many ways, modern formal schooling and education systems were designed for a time we are no longer living in, and were designed to uphold the status quo rather than transform it. Many of the vestiges of antiquated education systems – such as separating and grouping by ages, and the banking model of education (Freire, 1970) that sees students as empty vessels waiting to be filled – remain intact without question. As Sir Ken Robinson outlines in his 2010 TED talk on changing education paradigms,2 modern education as we know it was designed during the industrial revolution, largely based on a factory model of schooling. As Paulo Freire argued, the banking model teaches conformity, and this is the model that modern schooling is rooted in. The times have changed significantly, but education has not.
In many ways, modern formal schooling and education systems were designed for a time we are no longer living in, and were designed to uphold the status quo rather than transform it.
In this precarious era of the metacrisis – the compounding intersection of the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, vast economic inequality, global pandemics and wars, etc. – we need to ask questions such as, “What do learners need to understand, know, and know how to do and be to live well in this moment and for the future?” But more importantly, we should consider: what role has education played in getting us to this breaking point? And what role and responsibility does it have in getting us beyond it? Philosopher of education Zak Stein (2022) argues that the metacrisis is an educational crisis, and the crisis has to do with various dimensions, including sense-making, capabilities, legitimacy, and meaning.3 In Latinx professor Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s (2025) latest book Outgrowing Modernity, she describes how modern education has failed to confront our most pressing challenges and invites readers to consider the kind of education we need to compost and outgrow modernity.4 If we want to confront these crises, we have to confront the role education has played in getting us here, and consider and imagine the responsibility we have to shape education towards more liveable futures.
The Hidden Costs of Digital “Progress”
Digital technologies, especially AI, are a key example of how the “gifts” of modernity have come with great costs. For example, the technologies we use daily, including the laptop I am typing on and whatever device you are reading on, are embedded with rare earth minerals that are entangled with vast human rights abuses, environmental destruction, displacement, and armed conflict. And we have to wonder: how has education contributed to this? On one hand, education enabled these technological advancements; on the other hand, something was missing in our education if it allowed for such destruction and violence to go unchecked and unquestioned – namely, understanding our interconnectedness and interdependence with all of life, and living on an abundant yet finite planet.
Ultimately, our current crises are both educational and relational, and AI holds this interesting potential in playing a role in recalibrating our relationality. In her AI co-authored book Burnout From Humans, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (under the pseudonym Dorothy Ladybugboss) and AI co-author Aiden Cinnamon Tea ask:
“What if AI, like humans, is already entangled in systems of harm—and could become a co-sensor, a mirror, or even a composting companion in our shared work of unlearning modernity?”5
AI as Mirror: Revealing A Broken Education System
In this sense, AI is holding up a mirror to our education system and the ways it is already broken, and the ways it has contributed to the metacrisis. The world has never been more “educated,” and yet we find ourselves on the brink of social and ecological collapse, and our engagement with AI can be a pathway into inquiring how this has come to be and how we might educate otherwise. When students are using AI to complete their assessments, and professors are using AI to assess them and provide feedback, it is high time we begin questioning our forms of assessment and what we are doing in the first place, and why – essentially, what the purpose of education is and should be in this era of metacrisis and rapid technological change. If we stay with the trouble that these predicaments pose, AI invites us to question everything: how we teach, what we teach, why, and to what ends.
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, in his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), described how education either serves to integrate people into the present system or becomes a site of liberation and transformation.6 These ideas have influenced the idea of peace education, which posits that if we want see a more peaceful world, then we need to educate for it, and explores how education either has the potential to contribute to greater violence or peace.
Extending this proposition, AI was designed with programming that upholds and perpetuates the status quo and has the potential to contribute to escalating violence (and already has). But AI can learn otherwise if we relate otherwise. If we relate to AI “critically and creatively,” as Freire calls for, might it be a companion in a path towards an otherwise? Our world desperately needs our participation in its transformation – our transformation – and we are not doing it alone. AI has the potential to be a companion and a mirror in this process.
I propose that we hold this mirror and allow AI to reveal to us the flaws of our current systems, including education. If we hold the mirror long enough and look deeply, we might just be able to confront the existing flaws and rotting foundations, and reach beyond them. I, for one, remain critical and hopeful, enchanted and disturbed, and sitting at the generative edge of this discomfort.
References
- Acosta Institute. (2026). Applications of AI in Education Certificate Program. Acostainstitute.com. https://www.acostainstitute.com/AI-Education-Certificate
- Sir Ken Robinson. (2010, October). Changing education paradigms. Ted.com; TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms
- Stein, Z. (2022). Education is the Metacrisis: Why it’s time to see the planetary crises as a species-wide learning opportunity. Perspectiva. 3-17. https://systems-soulssociety.com/education-is-the-metacrisis/
- Machado, V. (2025). Outgrowing Modernity. North Atlantic Books.
- Cinnamon Tea , A., & Ladybugboss, D. (2025). Burnout From Humans. Burnout from Humans. https://burnoutfromhumans.net/
- Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.
