Educating for the AI Era: Harnessing the Wild Gen-AI Horse through Multiplex AI Humanities and Critical AI Literacy

In the epoch marked by swift advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), the dual nature of technology as an enabler and disruptor becomes even more pronounced for education. While offering remarkable conveniences and efficiencies, particularly in fostering accelerated personalized learning, GenAI also poses a threat to the nuanced, human-centric interpersonal approach fundamental to authentic education. We critique the current impersonal use of GenAI in educational technology, identifying its propensity for dehumanization, undermining intrinsic motivation for learning, diminishing learner autonomy, and eroding essential human emotions and societal skills. We criticize this “uniplex” approach to education and GenAI and as alternative propose a “multiplex” educational approach based on a multilayered analysis by delving into strategies for domesticating the “wild horse” of GenAI (that harnesses its potential and mitigates its harms). We examine the historical trajectory of technology and science, and critique the “uniplex” worldview it has raised post-Enlightenment, which rejects metaphysical reality, intuition, revelation, and normative values due to its limited reductive philosophical basis. While this outlook has spurred material progress, the lack of “multiplexity” has wreaked havoc in the educational domain by ignoring educational objectives related to virtuous living, character building, and living a value-driven life. In this paper, we propose the development of a “Multiplex AI Humanities” (MAIH) framework based on the concept of multiplexity, which corresponds to the Islamic notion of “marātib,” (literally, levels or hierarchy), to guide the design and evaluation of AI tools, particularly in education, through wisdom that accrues from combining empirical sciences and normative values. The MAIH framework will transcend traditional silos, combining technical mastery in AI with a multiplex worldview, with wisdom that accrues from combining empirical sciences and normative values to develop human-centered and interpersonal pedagogical approaches leveraging AI to cultivate human emotions, innate skills, and agency. We highlight the urgent need for a multiplex critical pedagogy, AI literacy, and a comprehensive examination of AI’s ethics, politics, and economics, all while steering technological progress toward enhancing social and individual well-being.