Escalating advances in technology, including artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, are reshaping global economies, societies and institutions, with significant implications for democracy, critical thinking and global citizenship.
What roles does AI play in society, and in light of that, what greater responsibilities emerge for universities? New technology has brought unimaginable benefits as well as dangers.
Here, I focus on the dangers and highlight avenues for university-based research.
Advanced technology is represented as politically neutral, enhancing convenience and productivity and creating a better world.
However, Julie Cohen from Georgetown University Law Center has highlighted how the “tech oligarchy” harnesses extreme wealth and technoscience to impose their visions on our collective future.
Technology is ideologically positioned as the main source of progress, and regulation is scapegoated as the enemy of innovation. In addition, political leaders such as Donald Trump and tech giants such as Elon Musk engage in coordinated action to challenge democratic institutions, erode human rights and reinforce discrimination against women, people of colour and the LGBT+ community.
Through their actions, they are paving the way for a shrinking government and civil society and facilitating the transfer of political and economic power to tech elites who aim to fashion society in their own interests.
Serving the global good
Universities, as institutions dedicated to knowledge, critical inquiry and the public good, can play an important role by prioritising interdisciplinary research on how political and economic power and technology work together to harness or prevent AI from being deployed for the global good.
The refusal of the United States and the United Kingdom to sign the 2025 Paris AI summit declaration with its focus on sustainability, human rights, inclusivity and the future of work suggests that we need creativity in securing space for innovation within corporate and government-funded research to support the future of people and our planet.
The meshing of AI into the lives of students through personalised learning, support for those that are disabled and remote access for those in countries engulfed in conflict is empowering and contributes to the common good. However, it also raises questions around the goals of universities in nurturing empathy and supporting students to engage in dialogue to build democratic societies.
Digital platforms co-opt the language of democratisation, while powerful predictive AI algorithms drive recommendation engines which reinforce political divisions.
In addition, digital platforms reinforce short attention spans, reward instant gratification and provide smooth interfaces between humans and machines to remove discomfort. The danger is that students are not encouraged to apply sustained effort to complex tasks, nor are they equipped to evaluate colliding ideas and navigate conflict.
While virtual reality holds the promise of enabling students to stand in the shoes of others to facilitate understanding and empathy, it is not clear, as Yuval Noah Harari suggests, whether such simulation and artificial mimicry truly advances these dispositions.
Potential and limits
Research on pedagogy that goes beyond teaching students about algorithmic bias and engages them in truly understanding the potential and limits of technology is required.
It is also important to study how to balance the excitement of what is technically possible with moral questions about what is socially desirable. How we teach generative AI skills to enhance rather than atrophise human skills, and the interaction of the digital and the human in equipping students to grapple with democratic values and global citizenship, are fundamental to the commitment of future generations to human-centred technology.
New technologies such as AI and big data clearly enhance university research. At the University of Exeter, our Responsible Climate Interventions combine machine learning and environmental economics to maximise carbon sequestration and realise the co-benefits of biodiversity and flood risk mitigation.
Scientists from McMaster University (Canada) and MIT (United States) used AI to discover a new antibiotic in a very short space of time to treat a deadly superbug.
Dangers of overreliance
However, blind faith and overreliance on technology lead to a loss of intellectual autonomy and an illusion of choice. AI functions like an oracle, with big data and technology giving it uncontested authority and the semblance of neutrality.
The danger, as Shannon Vallor argues, is that decisions on the future of humanity will be based on the patterns that are already engraved in our recorded data, which are in turn based on the values of the tech oligarchs who have the power and resources to shape our world, a world that is heading towards a social and climate catastrophe.
Finally, AI raises questions around what it is to be human. AI dominance reduces the totality of human beings to numerous data points as inputs for machines. At the same time, AI is assigned human attributes with labels such as “co-pilot”.
In Technopoly, Neil Postman warns that a culture that seeks its authorisation in technology will have us believe that we are at our best when we act like machines. We are thus left with big questions for research: what is thinking, what is consciousness and what does it mean to be human?
Rajani Naidoo is professor of higher education and social change and vice-president and deputy vice-chancellor for people and culture at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. She holds a UNESCO Chair and is visiting professor at the University of Bath, United Kingdom, and Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth,
