Problematising AI

Digital futures and inequalities, an AI sorting hat, early years digital literacy, playtime, Jony Ives, a URL shortener to try, and much more...

Feb 28, 2025

What’s happening

Digital futures and inequalities: critical perspectives on AI, information, decoloniality, sustainability

Sarah joined UCL colleagues and other attendees last week at a fascinating day of talks and discussions on critical perspectives to AI and edtech run by the UCL Knowledge Lab Seminar Series and ReMAP Centre at UCL. The seminar day was in collaboration with last week’s Critical Studies in Education Technology (CSET) 2025 Global Seminar call, which saw researchers from 50 countries around the world invited to organise and run local academic meetings around the common theme: Problematising education and digital technology. Neil Selwyn of Monash University, Australia, posed questions as provocations to frame the local seminars.

Speakers at the UCL Knowledge Lab event addressed issues including the status of knowledge and information in the context of AI and ‘the digital’, decolonising technologies, and the environmental and societal impacts of technology, such as the extraction of natural resources, neocolonialism, labour inequalities and platform power.

The end of information: media and education in a ‘post-truth’ age

David Buckingham, Honorary Professor at UCL’s Institute of Education, discussed themes from his upcoming new book, The End of Information. As a researcher focused on the commercial world's impact on children and author of the media education manifesto, he brings a unique perspective to current debates.

He argued for:

describing information disorder rather than misinformation and disinformation
media education rather than media literacy. Media literacy tends to focus on functional skills, tips, checklists and places excessive responsibility on individuals and consumers whereas media education focuses on concepts of critical thinking – “We need to show how knowledge is produced. We need to know how we know what we know.”
an awareness of the paradox of media literacy which potentially encourages cynicism and more loss of trust

Check out David’s excellent website and blog posts

How does financing shape tech design in education?

Caroline Pelletier, also from IOE, UCL, argued for the need to examine how design priorities and the financial models of venture capitalism impact the creation of tech products for the education sector. Her presentation delved into the development process of these products, specifically how designers' conceptions of education, learning and students interact with the financial imperatives. She pointed out that venture capital's emphasis on scalability and risk-taking, often at the expense of efficiency or established outcomes, significantly influences the design decisions in the edtech field.

Other presentations, including Haira Gandolfi and Haley Perkins, explored environmental, colonial and societal issues emphasising inequalities between production in the global south and consumption in the global north.

The supply chain capitalism of AI

At the moment when the US president has called for Ukraine to make an agreement over its mineral resources for the tech industry, Ana Valdivia’s (lecturer in AI, Government & Policy at Oxford University Internet Institute) illustrations of her research into mineral extraction, AI chip production, e-waste and data centre and AI operations were informative and chilling.

‘Water for the people, not for the private companies’. The community from Maconí protesting in front of the city hall of Querétaro in October 2023. Source: Ana’s own photo during fieldwork.

She gave examples of data centres displacing water from local communities in one of the driest parts of Mexico, of locals in Chile and Uruguay protesting against the building of data centres, and explained the number and origin of minerals such as gold, tungsten needed in AI GPU chips and the geopolitical significance of these locations and impact on poor and indigenous people.

Ana called for shifting attention to corporate responsibility rather than individual-focused solutions, which place additional burden on already anxious individuals

The hidden cost of tech and AI

Kambale Musavali (human rights activist and technologist) made a powerful call for activism in his talk and explained the context of current fighting in the Congo, corporate control of mineral wealth and the relationship to conflict minerals such as cobalt in Tesla cars and in the technology we use.

As the day of critical enquiry concluded with a panel discussion and audience Q&A, a clear commonality emerged from the speakers' presentations: the importance of empathy and human value in our use of digital technologies and information. All of the speakers challenged us to look beyond individual responsibility toward systemic understanding and change. Together, these perspectives remind us that creating more equitable digital futures requires not just technological innovation, but a fundamental reimagining of knowledge production, resource distribution and power relationships in our world. The seminar has made clear that the path forward must include decolonial approaches to technology, environmental justice and educational practices that empower rather than extract – challenges that will require continued critical engagement from researchers, educators, corporations and activists alike.

AI roundup

Embracing AI / questioning AI

“AI is neither a magic solution nor an existential threat. It is a tool – one that, when used wisely, can transform education for the better.”

As regular readers will know, we do like a Miles Berry slide deck, and this is a good’un. It’s from his Wandle Learning Trust’s Embracing AI conference opening address and also comes with the recording of his keynote and an accompanying blog post.

Damning AI
There’s less of the embracing and more – much more – of the questioning to be found in Helen Beetham’s latest long (very long) dive into the lack of evidence and evaluation for and of the UK government’s AI policies and prescriptions.

See also the AI and creatives’ copyright campaign

We’re wrong about AI
A powerful five-minute video from Will Alpine, who helped build ChatGPT and led Green AI at Microsoft, on AI and environmental impact advocating for guardrails that align AI and technology with climate science (via Doug Belshaw)

See also DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all: new figures show that if the model’s energy-intensive “chain of thought” reasoning gets added to everything, the promise of efficiency gets murky.

An AI sorting hat
Interesting test of LLMs from Chris Goodall, who gave five models the real-world use case of allocating year 7 students into form groups. Specifically, ‘Sort the Year 7 new intake (250 children) into 18 forms, ensuring the distribution is as balanced as possible in terms of gender, ability, behaviour, Special Educational Needs (SEN) taking into account any language preference (6 forms will be assigned Spanish and 12 French) and if possible, friendship requests’. Only Claude 3.7 could do it. Obviously, there are data protection / privacy implications to tasks such as this, and in this instance Goodall confirmed he had anonymised the dataset first.

AI and critical thinking
This study investigates the relationship between using AI tools and critical thinking skills. The findings revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, with younger participants showing higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants. The findings underscore the importance of fostering critical thinking in an AI-driven world.

‘Explosive’ use of generative AI tools by students
This year’s HEPI / Kortext survey shows the proportion of students reporting using any AI tool has jumped from 66% last year to 92% this year and just under half of students (45%) said they had used AI at school. Tools such as ChatGPT are used in assessments by 88% of students.

Queen’s University Belfast has a good open access hub of AI guides and resources

Quick links

What have we learned about restricting smartphones at school? One year on from UK government guidance restricting student use of smartphones in schools, Miriam Rahali, Beeban Kidron and Sonia Livingstone take a characteristically thoughtful look at the evidence around the impact.

“As with the debate on smartphones at school, high-handed bans are unlikely to satisfactorily protect children or enable them to make informed decisions about their digital lives. Whether as educators, parents, regulators or businesses, we have a collective responsibility for children. We need to shift the culture – at home, at school, and among peer groups – so that children can better navigate and, indeed, flourish within the digital environment.”

Introduction to digital sustainability: this is one for Jisc member organisations (so, UK HE and FE) and it looks great – a short digital learning module designed to introduce the basic concepts and practical applications of digital sustainability, including topics such as AI, positive solutions and best practices.

School attendance: Ofsted chief Martyn Oliver says more parents working from home since pandemic has led to a shift in attitudes among pupils in England
Children are spending less time playing both at school and outside education: parents and children may be spending more time at home but this study suggests children are spending less time playing both at school and outside education.
The 2025 Common Sense Census: Thanks to Michaela Carmichael for sharing Common Sense’s first comprehensive look since the pandemic at how children from birth to age 8 are engaging with media and technology.

We’re reading, listening…

Early years digital literacy
We’ve previously reported on the launch of the Early Years Digital Media Literacy Review, which Sarah was on the advisory board for. In this episode of Tech Shock, Parent Zone’s Vicki Shotbolt unpacks the findings of the research report and explores the topic further with expert guests, including what is meant by digital media literacy in the context of the early years and how to support parents now while also building a necessary evidence base.

What does computing education look like in 2024/25?
This Raspberry Pi podcast (and video) conversation with educators from India, North America, Kenya and the UK explores two key themes: how AI is impacting computing education, and how computing education varies throughout the world.

Jony Ives on Desert Island Discs
In this curiously unsatisfying edition of Radio 4’s DID, Jony Ives, the designer of so many iconic Apple products, including the iMac, iPod and iPhone, briefly touches on AI and says that he is “unusually optimistic” about it. His main concern is the sheer pace of change (which ties in with Rose Luckin’s useful maxim for AI: ‘learn fast, act more slowly’)