Accelerationism, AI Safety, and Education: Technocapitalist Discourses on AI Alignment and their Educational Implications
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/reec.48.2025.45369Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, educational technology, ethics, AI Alignment, accelerationism, teaching autonomyAbstract
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in education is driven by accelerationist and technocapitalist narratives that portray its deployment as inevitable and inherently beneficial, while sidelining critical reflection and reducing ethical concerns to performative gestures. This article critically examines these dominant discourses and their impact on the ongoing debates on AI alignment and AI safety in educational contexts, analyzing the power asymmetry between the corporate sector and the educational community, as well as its implications for teaching and learning. The analysis argues that the notion of AI alignment is being co-opted by corporate interests, reframing it as mere risk management and ignoring the extractivist logic of data appropriation, the profit-driven motivations of tech industries, and the algorithmic capture of the educational process. This corporate dominance reshapes pedagogical practices according to market logics, undermining teacher autonomy and students’ cognitive development, with emerging risks of cognitive offloading, diminished critical thinking, and reduced creativity. The presumed neutrality of generative models is called into question, and it is cautioned that teachers’ agency is increasingly threatened by insufficient training, reduced control over educational processes, and the opacity of AI systems, factors that contribute to their deprofessionalization and subordination to algorithmic logics. All of this unfolds within a broader context of an escalating epistemic crisis in the production and rigor of scientific knowledge, increasingly vulnerable to algorithmic bias and fabricated information. In light of these dynamics, the article calls for a “pedagogical alignment” of AI that subordinates technological development to the principles of social justice, critical autonomy, and educational sovereignty, emphasizing the active role of institutions and educational communities as a strategy of resistance against the accelerationist impulse.
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