Generative AI, Knowledge Authority, and Social Justice in Higher Education: Rethinking the University in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

Abstract

This conceptual essay examines how generative artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping knowledge authority and the meaning of social justice in higher education. Drawing on scholarship concerning neoliberal globalization, social justice education, digital datafication, and educational purpose, it argues that generative AI should not be understood as an isolated technological disruption. Rather, it intensifies existing transformations in which universities operate as competitive institutions and knowledge circulates through global corporate infrastructures. Generative AI produces a dual movement: it can widen students' access to explanations and academic support while concentrating epistemic power within technology companies whose systems remain difficult to scrutinize. Linguistic, cultural, and digital inequalities therefore complicate claims that AI automatically democratizes knowledge. The essay proposes that justice in AI-mediated education must address not only access to institutions and technologies but also control over the production, validation, and circulation of knowledge. It concludes that universities and teachers should reorient their authority toward critical interpretation, conceptual clarification, democratic participation, and the cultivation of responsible judgement.