"AI Literacy" and the Pedagogy of the Oppressor

Audrey Watters

20 Jan 2025 — 7 min read

“AI Literacy.” We’re going to be hearing a lot about this in the coming months, I reckon, as various ed-tech consultants and entrepreneurs hustle to capitalize on the generative AI hype – before the next “AI winter” sets in, at least.

Tacking the word “literacy” to the tail-end of the technology you’re promoting makes a lot of sense when you’re selling your products and services to the education sector. Media literacy. Computer literacy. Digital literacy. Web literacy. “Literacy,” broadly defined, is part of the mission of schools after all. The word has all sorts of academic and civic meanings, of course, and it (sometimes) makes room for a wide range of interpretations, pedagogies, and politics.

As complex and contentious as "literacy" might be, arguably it’s safer to frame your AI sales-pitch as a such than labeling it “job training,” even though that’s often what these literacy programs entail. It’s certainly what most tech literacy initiatives imply: students’ future job prospects depend on their professional, “productive” usage of technology; indeed quite often of a very specific piece of software (whose maker has graciously funded the literacy effort, natch).

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