Conference Program

The growing integration of artificial intelligence in educational contexts often promotes efficiency-oriented models of learning based on prediction, standardization, and the delegation of judgment, where AI is approached as an immediate source of answers rather than as an object of inquiry. In this scenario, this contribution reframes AI education through the perspective of convivial and non-directive pedagogies, understood as practices capable of sustaining students’ autonomy and the plurality of interpretative processes.

This contribution draws on a situated educational experience in upper secondary education (grades 10–12) and is based on participant observation of a cycle of workshops specifically designed to critically explore the role of AI in learning processes. In this context, AI is not introduced as a tool for optimizing performance or providing correct solutions, but as an object of shared exploration and as a device for the dialogic co-construction of knowledge. The activities are designed to suspend the logic of the single correct answer and immediate validation, and to privilege the comparison of different interpretations, collective argumentation, and the negotiation of meaning within the classroom.

Within this setting, AI’s epistemic authority is deliberately decentered and interaction with generative systems becomes a participatory space in which knowledge is not received but constructed through dialogic practices. From this perspective, AI is framed neither as a neutral device nor as a performance-support tool, but as an element that renders visible the tensions between standardization and autonomy and enables a democratic reconfiguration of the educational environment.

The theoretical framework is grounded in the traditions of convivial and non-directive pedagogies. Illich’s notion of convivial tools allows AI to be interpreted as a technology that can either sustain or constrain autonomy depending on the educational practices in which it is embedded, while Freire’s pedagogy of autonomy informs the design of learning environments based on dialogic responsibility, participation, and the co-construction of knowledge.

The observations collected indicate that practices of this kind foster a use of AI that is not oriented toward delegation, but toward the production of spaces for plural reasoning in which students are called to take a position, engage with different perspectives, and actively participate in knowledge construction. In this light, AI education does not coincide with the acquisition of technical skills, but with the design of convivial contexts capable of sustaining autonomy, reflective judgment, and democratic participation.

This contribution engages with the panel by showing how the principles of non-directive pedagogy can be translated into concrete educational practices and how AI can be reconfigured, within such practices, from an apparatus of normalization into a convivial partner for democratic learning.

The presentation outlines the key philosophical ideas behind Ivan Illich’s social criticism, with particular emphasis on the personalist elements within it as a possible paradigm for a renewed educational system.

Illich captures the fate of the “new society” – the modern and postmodern age – with the following insight: “Our imaginations have been industrially deformed to conceive only what can be moulded into an engineered system or social habits that fit the logic of large-scale production. We have almost lost the ability to frame in fancy a world in which sound and shared reasoning sets limits to everybody's power to interfere with anybody's equal power to shape the world.”¹

He argues that we are not merely passing through a historical stage but inhabiting an era in which the ontological understanding of the human being is fundamentally reshaped. Humans increasingly become instruments and consumers of their own inventions rather than agents who use them to realize their creative and human potential.

His criticism rests on two core concepts: vernacular values and convivial society. Vernacular values refer to the value systems found in indigenous cultures and small autonomous communities – systems grounded in mutual aid, independence from global institutional-industrial forces, and proportional reciprocity between human beings and their environment. Such a framework enables individuals to actualize their humanity by offering a concrete experience of human existence within a broader reality.

The notion of a convivial society builds on these values, translating them into a vision for contemporary post‑modernity. It represents a new epistemic and normative orientation toward reality – one that modern societies have largely lost.

While the modern legal system grounds many of its principles in the concept of the person, Illich emphasizes another dimension often overlooked: the lived, relational experience of personhood. This dimension cannot be fully articulated in rights or declarations but manifests in direct, lived engagement with others. Here Illich’s thought intersects significantly with the personalist tradition. True personal development, he argues, cannot be achieved solely through abstract theories or formal legislation but through a life-giving orientation toward the other: “We can only live these changes: we cannot think our way to humanity.”²

The presentation is structured in three parts. The first introduces the philosophical foundations of Illich’s social criticism. The second examines these concepts through the lens of personalist philosophy. The final section synthesizes the results and considers whether a convivial-personalist paradigm can serve as a viable framework for renewed understanding of contemporary society and new educational approaches. The central thesis of this presentation is that education and pedagogy must be grounded in the dignity and uniqueness of the human person, and only then expressed through specific educational approaches and methodologies.

¹ Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, Fontana (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co, 1975), 28.

² Ivan Illich, Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971), 3.

In the age of artificial intelligence, digital innovation is often framed as neutral and efficiency-driven. Such narratives risk fostering passivity, epistemic homogenization, narrowing of imagination, and the erosion of democratic agency in new generations. Education, therefore, cannot be limited to integrate AI as an instructional resource or as a necessary skill to be taught; it must cultivate the individuals’ capacity to interrogate, reappropriate, and reshape technologies in light of social justice and democratic values. What is needed is to foster a critical culture of digital innovation.

Starting from the definition of a theoretical framework that integrates critical pedagogy, futures studies and sustainable digital innovation, the paper conceptualizes education as a cultural and political space where technologies can be understood through the lenses of social justice and democracy. Innovation processes, particularly those related to AI, need to be examined in relation to the values they embed and reproduce: they may reinforce inequalities, undermine human dignity and environmental sustainability, or alternatively become drivers of justice, cohesion and ecological responsibility.

Within this perspective, schools are not merely sites of technological adoption but spaces of democratic imagination where pedagogical practices cultivate students’ critical and anticipatory capacities. Drawing on Futures Studies, these approaches encourage learners to question existing technological paths and to imagine more just alternatives. This perspective advances a dual trajectory: supporting both teachers and students in developing critical and anticipatory competences while engaging in educational pathways oriented toward emancipation and the co-construction of more equitable technological futures.

Central to this approach is to use “possible futures” as pedagogical spaces. Through anticipatory methodologies, such as speculative design, learners are fostered to imagine desirable futures grounded in democratic values and social justice and to identify pathways towards their realization. This process nurtures students and teachers’ ownership and agency over the socio-technical systems that shape their lives, cultivating plural imaginaries and critical reasoning that resist algorithmic standardization. Within this perspective, convivial futures can be understood as both a pedagogical horizon and a methodological tool: collective futures explored through educational practices that enable individuals to question, reinterpret, and reshape technological innovation in light of democratic and socially just values.

The paper briefly discusses the InspAIr laboratory as an exploratory application of this conceptual and methodological framework. In this experience, teachers and students collaboratively engage in speculative and critical inquiry around AI systems, highlighting embedded biases, power structures and sustainability implications. This pedagogical practice illustrates how convivial futures pedagogies can translate theoretical principles into concrete educational processes.

Ultimately, the contribution argues that cultivating a critical culture of digital innovation among young generation is not simply an educational innovation, but a democratic necessity and urgency. By reconnecting technological development to the foundational values of social justice, plurality and collective responsibility, education can help reconfigure AI towards convivial futures that sustains democratic non-homogenization.

This proposal aims to present an approach to Moral Education inspired by Iris Murdoch and apply it to Digital Education, suggesting that building a virtual image, strictly influenced by intersubjectivity and moral vocabulary, is not merely an escape, but rather an attempt to reconnect to the world through imagination, which might be defined as “digital realism”.

Indeed, Education plays a fundamental role in Iris Murdoch though, placing particular emphasis on the importance of context, in relation to which she focuses on the moral concept of vision, which, alongside imagination and attention, serves as an exploratory tool for engaging with reality. In this framework language plays a fundamental role in Iris Murdoch’s thought: every choice is linguistically oriented, as she stated, «words are where we live as human beings and as moral spiritual agents» (Murdoch, 1972). In this view, language functions as a moral medium because each use implies a value judgement and creativity from the agent. From a literary perspective, driven by imagination, writers navigate a network of meanings that directly impact reality. Literature’s urge towards completeness compensates philosophical language, by developing its moral vocabulary through a process of perfectionism. As “word-users” (Murdoch, 1978) we are constantly immersed in literature that we use to «make interesting forms out of experience» (Ibidem). Furthermore, language can modify ethical perspective, even before actions are taken.

Today, the pervasiveness of digital technologies transforms the way we express ourselves through ordinary language. According to Murdoch, «we are all story-tellers and in this sense we are all literary artists» (Murdoch, 1978). With our “digital stories” we are shaping our identity and defining our “conceptual life” (Diamond, 2006). However, a virtual-based identity necessarily raises the problem of “reality”. Similarly, the levels of attention and also learning methods, and language change. With our digital lives, we are exposed in our existential diary, previously relegated to the private sphere, the οἶκος, which now becomes public, becoming πόλις. Ordinary realism, through attention, allows us to essentially go beyond our own story. The use of digital technology, like all discussions on technique allows us to notice the vulnerability of others in a perspective of care and education “about” and “through” the digital.

Any contemporary discussion of education as a fundamental aspect of moral realism, from a Murdochian perspective, must necessarily take into account the digital dimension, which provides an opportunity to reflect on the concepts that shape our moral lives.

In contemporary society, characterised by the accelerated and pervasive advancement of artificial intelligence, democratic education confronts a multitude of challenges. Primarily, it is imperative to avert the potential of computational logic to engender epistemic oppression. In this context, the pedagogical traditions of Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire can offer significant food for thought in finding solutions to these transformations.

The initial point of departure will be Illich's analysis of radical monopolies¹, which posits that the advent of new technologies has the potential to erode the autonomy of the learner, thereby fostering both genuine cognitive dependence and the homogenisation of knowledge. Indeed, the potential of AI to reduce the individual to a mere agent, one that automatically and mechanically follows instructions, is a matter of great concern. This would effectively prevent the individual from playing their own role as the architect of their cognitive activity, thereby stifling their ontological vocation to 'be more'. In the face of the looming spectre of technological determinism, the pedagogy of autonomy proposed by Paulo Freire is poised to emerge as a potential solution. This pedagogy emphasises the necessity of conceptualising education as a praxis of consciousness-raising² and dialogical responsibility.

Education, therefore, would help to foster a spirit of critical inquiry capable of transforming curiosity into a rigorous commitment to transforming reality, rather than a passive adaptation to it. Confronted with a predetermined algorithm, critical education encourages the learner to transcend rote learning and meticulously investigate the underlying rationales behind the information received, the conceptual frameworks employed by the designers of these machines, and the limitations of purely technical expertise. Finally, Illich's reflections on conviviality could offer a tool for rethinking the algorithm: from an instrument of domination and oppression, it becomes convivial, that is, open to user intervention and capable of stimulating doubt and debate through transparency and intellectual provocation. In this sense, the information provided by AI would cease to be considered as absolute truths, but rather as raw data on which the individual can exercise critical judgement by questioning their own biases and verifying sources. This process is instrumental in enabling the realisation of the autonomy of knowledge.

¹ The term 'radical monopoly' is employed to denote the phenomenon in which an industrial production process exerts exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need, thereby precluding the possibility of resorting to non-industrial activities. . Illich, Tools for Conviviality, Marion Boyars, 2001.

² In this regard, Freire emphasises the need for critical thinking that enables us to uncover the causes of social barriers, transforming the notion of a 'predetermined fate' into one of possibility and agency. P. Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 1998.