The social life of Artificial Intelligence in education

Artificial intelligence is becoming a major feature of educational practice and policymaking, but researchers are beginning to raise critical questions about its ethics and effects. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the subject of both hype and horror in education. During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, AI in education (AIed) attracted serious investor interest, market speculation, and enthusiastic technofuturist predictions. At the same time, algorithms and statistical models were implicated in several major controversies over predictive grading based on historical performance data, raising serious questions about privileging data-driven assessment over teacher judgment. In the new special issue AI in education: Critical perspectives and alternative futures published in Learning, Media and Technology, Rebecca Eynon and I pulled together a collection of cutting edge social scientific analyses of AIed.