Onto-Epistemological Understandings of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education

Abstract

Over the past decade, the growth in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping and changing how we interact, learn, and work, and is likely to bring ongoing change in the future. However, current educational understandings, frameworks and models concerning digital technologies and digital literacies are remaining relatively static and hierarchical, and do not adequately accommodate GenAI's unique learning capabilities, creative potential and agency. In this conceptual article we use critical dialogic inquiry and employ ecological thinking using the notion of symbiosis and posthuman perspectives to explore and speculate about the nature of GenAI and its potential impact on educators and learners. We offer a new way of conceptualising human relationships with GenAI, which we call "symbi(AI)tic understandings." Symbi(AI)tic understandings acknowledge the evolving and contextual relationships between partners: from balanced mutualism to one-sided commensalism to potentially harmful parasitism. Thus, we position human-GenAI relationships as part of change futures in which there are complex associations between technology and human endeavour. These understandings aim to foster more nuanced ways of being with and thinking about technology: ways which are vital for educators and learners as they transition into an era of education with AI.

Received: 19 September 2024 | Revised: 26 November 2024 | Accepted: 18 December 2024

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Edwin Creely: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.  Kitty Janssen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization.