The university and artificial intelligence: Critical tensions from transhumanism and posthumanism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31207/colloquia.v12i1.180Keywords:
Artificial intelligence, higher education, transhumanism, posthumanism, autonomy, commodificationAbstract
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education raises new ethical, political, and epistemological challenges. This article examines the tensions between transhumanism and posthumanism as conceptual frameworks that shape contemporary understandings of the university. From a critical perspective, it argues that AI not only transforms the technical processes of teaching, learning, and management, but also reconfigures the relationships between humans, technologies, and institutions, giving rise to new dynamics of subjectivation, control, and governance. Methodologically, this is a theoretical and documentary reflection article based on a critical review of interdisciplinary literature on artificial intelligence, higher education, and posthumanist studies. The aim of the study is to analyze the conceptual and practical tensions that emerge from the incorporation of artificial intelligence into higher education, through three interrelated dimensions: subjectivation, linked to predictive AI and its role in shaping subjects oriented toward performance and optimization; predictive control, related to learning analytics and automated assessment systems that model student trajectories and behaviors; and algorithmic governance, associated with academic analytics and the use of automated systems in institutional decision-making. Based on these dimensions, three main implications are discussed: the ethical dimension, concerning data protection and power asymmetries between institutions and students; university autonomy, understood as a historical principle challenged by technological dependency and the delegation of decision-making to algorithmic systems; and the commodification of higher education, expressed through platformization, datafication, and the subordination of academic practices to market logics. From a Latin American perspective, it is emphasized that the uncritical adoption of AI may reproduce structural inequalities and deepen technological dependence. In contrast, the article advocates for contextualized, ethical, and collaborative approaches to AI integration, through open-source projects, local regulations, and institutional strategies that strengthen technological sovereignty and inclusion. In summary, it argues that the contemporary university has become a field of ontological and political dispute, where artificial intelligence redefines the human, the educational, and the institutional, calling for a critical rethinking of its role in higher education.
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