Author : Arpan Tulsyan

Expert Speak India Matters
Published on Jan 23, 2025

Without meaningful education, AI can allure humans with its promise of convenience, customisation and efficiency, leading them to adopt it without fully considering the autonomy they surrender.

AI and human agency: Reflections on the International Day of Education

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Observed annually on 24 January, the International Day of Education is a recognition of education's crucial role in promoting peace, advancement, and collective human flourishing. This year, under the theme “Artificial Intelligence and Education: Preserving Human Agency in a World of Automation,” the global community reflects on the duality of Artificial Intelligence (AI): its promise to improve human life, alongside its potential to erode human control. As policymakers, technologists, and educators grapple to find a balance between these two ends, the role of education in shaping human capabilities and choices becomes ever more pertinent.

Shifting dynamics of agency

Agency, understood as the ability to think, choose, and act with meaning and purpose has traditionally been defined as a distinctive human quality. This ability includes aspects such as consciousness, moral reasoning, rationality, and the capability to navigate complex social situations. Fostering agency has always been a primary function of education. As students acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes to engage meaningfully with their environment, “individual desires transform into what Gert Biesta calls collective desirables.

So far, human agency was considered embedded in the tools and machines they designed, which performed only predefined functions, operating with a predefined logic. However, the current AI tools are designed with full cognitive capabilities, with the intention to function at par or even surpass human-level performance. Generative AI, in particular, learns, adapts, and grows beyond its initial programming, challenging the boundaries of human influence. The rapid acceptance of these tools defies traditional conceptualisations of agency, as machines enter domains that have traditionally been dominated by human judgment.

As students acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes to engage meaningfully with their environment, “individual desires” transform into what Gert Biesta calls “collective desirables”.

In a study by Pew Research Center, 56 percent of experts predict that in the next 10-15 years, most tech-aided decision-making will operate with minimal human oversight. They caution that agency may become highly concentrated in the hands of a small group of techno-elites, leaving the majority with only an illusion of choice and autonomy. The remaining 44 percent of experts, who are more optimistic, feel that humans will keep overseeing tech-powered decisions and maintain control over questions that are important to them.

Regardless, both sides concur that we are at a turning point in history where important issues regarding human control, autonomy, and agency require serious deliberation. Among the important questions are: How much control should we cede to technology? What checks and balances need to be in place for humans and AI to positively co-evolve? Which areas should remain completely under human control?

While such questions continue to be deliberated, one shift is certain. The notion of agency needs to be altered to include both human and non-human actors. Given their capacity for autonomous learning and decision-making, AI systems are positioned as co-agents rather than merely tools, establishing a sort of symbiotic agency alongside humans. The symbiotic agency acknowledges that humans and technologies relate in a mutually dependent and collaborative setting, sharing roles in decision-making and task execution. This symbiotic interaction involves proxy agency, where people assign tasks to technology based on convenience and efficiency, as well as reverse agency, where technology mediates human decisions, behaviours, and emotions.

The notion of agency needs to be altered to include both human and non-human actors.

The role of education in preserving human agency

Education becomes the linchpin when navigating the interdependence between the human and the machine, equipping people to harness AI’s potential while safeguarding the centrality of their creativity, judgment, and ethics. For this alignment, three key strategies emerge.

Firstly, AI can be leveraged as an effective learning tool that enhances student outcomes while reducing the burden on educators. Personalised and adaptive learning tools like intelligent tutoring systems, engagement strategies like gamification, and platforms that provide experiential learning encourage collaboration and experimentation, improving the quality of education. AI systems have also shown effectiveness in catalysing inclusive education for students with disabilities, bridging linguistic divides, and democratising access to quality resources. According to a McKinsey report, AI can help in tasks like preparation, administration and feedback, allowing educators to reclaim 20-30 percent of their time. They can redirect this freed-up time toward mentorship and personalised instruction, inspiring better academic outcomes and strengthening the teacher-student bond.

Secondly, it is important to prepare learners to critically engage with AI. AI literacy should not be limited to learning technical skills, but should also include developing competencies needed to effectively collaborate, and critically evaluate AI technologies. The  United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO’s) AI competency framework for students calls for a forward-looking vision where learners become “conscious decision makers”, who examine and understand the impact of AI on various crucial concepts like human agency, social equity, digital security, cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as the environment and its ecosystems.

AI can help in tasks like preparation, administration and feedback, allowing educators to reclaim 20-30 percent of their time.

Thirdly, it is crucial to always centre educators (ACE) in the selection, implementation, and evaluation of AI tools in the classroom. AI tools should make the task of an educator easier—reduce the burden of administrative work, enhance their instruction quality, and help personalise their teaching. UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Educators report highlights the role of educators as mediators between technology and learners and recommends the continuous professional development of teachers who value reflective practices.

Initiatives to strengthen AI education for learners

Several global initiatives illustrate the above approaches. UNICEF’s AI for Children project advocates for fairness and transparency in child-centred AI design. Similarly, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative offers AI literacy to K-12 learners, focused on its safe and responsible use. Curriculum programmes like "Developing AI Literacy" (DAILy) also emphasise teaching the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) to learners, allowing them to comprehend how it possibly impacts their future lives and careers. These programmes highlight the importance of embedding ethical AI literacy into curricula at all levels, from kindergarten education to higher studies.

A call to action from UNESCO for collaboration between educators, policymakers and technologists prioritises the deployment of human-centred AI that reflects the true needs of classrooms and retains students’ motivation, agency and holistic development. It asks us to devote significant attention to issues including teacher training, ethical AI literacy, the establishment of public-private partnerships to design inclusive AI tools, and interdisciplinary research.

A call to action from UNESCO for collaboration between educators, policymakers and technologists prioritises the deployment of human-centred AI that reflects the true needs of classrooms and retains students’ motivation, agency and holistic development.

Conclusion

Over the next decade, AI will undeniably transform human lives in many significant ways. In this context, education that prioritises thinking over remembering, problem-solving over passive learning and initiative over reliance will be our most valuable guardrail to human self-determination.

This International Day of Education is an opportune reminder that in an age of automation, it is ever more important that education’s mission extends beyond knowledge transmission. In doing so, education can equip students to navigate a complex future with confidence and purpose.


Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at the Observer Research Foundation

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Author

Arpan Tulsyan

Arpan Tulsyan

Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow at ORF’s Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED). With 16 years of experience in development research and policy advocacy, Arpan ...

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