Unsettling AI literacies: ethics, power and the pedagogies of critical research

Abstract

As GenAI systems have moved from novelty to everyday use in research and learningpractices, higher education institutions are increasingly adopting them in the realms of“literacy”, “responsible use”, and “ethical awareness”. Such framings often assume strategicsimplifications: imagining ethics as a checklist of principles and downplaying theinfrastructural forces that shape what counts as legitimate knowledge. This paper argues thatapproaching AI as a neutral “tool” obscures the value regimes and power asymmetriesembedded in its very architecture. Drawing on critical & education technology studies, itproposes a reorientation from AI literacy to critical AI socio-technical practices. Suchpractices have informed the curricular design, pedagogical implementation, and teachingreflections of two core modules within an online MA distance-learning programme. Theseare pedagogical practices that aim to foreground situated accountability, epistemic plurality,and alternative imaginaries. By centring observations from curriculum design & learningengagements, this paper advocates for an approach to AI in educational research thatforegrounds critical AI literacies: pedagogies attentive to power asymmetries, and that inspirethe emergent ways learners may reimagine (and sometimes resist) AI’s role in academicinquiry. This allows for reframing ethics as a politics of value production and infrastructuralpower and informs how educational research can move beyond the friend-foe binary andtoward more contestable engagements with GenAI in knowledge-making.