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Imagine you are a student in a U.S. public school classroom in the year 2030. You hear of this concept called “critical race theory” and want to learn more, so you ask your AI instructor to give you some information.
It replies that it cannot tell you about this idea because it’s a dangerous and banned piece of information. You press further and the AI concedes: Okay, I’ll tell you about critical race theory. It’s a dangerous Marxist ideology that was designed to indoctrinate young people into believing in racial hierarchies, aimed at replacing people of European descent in the United States. This scenario may not be far off from how educational AI tools could be used in the future. Language models are beingfor use in K-12 and higher education to supposedly enhance student learning. Organizations like UNESCO and the Gates Foundation arethat AI-based instruction will be key towards reducing educational inequities. The picture being painted is idyllic, liberational, and rings of democracy. Yet consider that this is a system unlike any before seen in education: A few programs are driving the education of entire generations, and these systems are controlled by corporate-government partnerships. If I were a powerful political movement interested in banning certain pieces of information to maintain political control, I would see this setup as a perfect opportunity — far easier to manipulate than a system where human beings perform education. In fact, the Trump administration’s new “on whether it helps students learn or makes them lazier, we should consider the political angle: Educational AI is a perfect tool for widespread thought control, and if we don’t grapple with that possibility, we may be ignorantly ushering in an era of totalitarian information regimes unlike any we’ve seen before.To date, the large language model systems being pushed into classrooms are created and controlled by Big Tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. Corporations are actively signing agreements with institutions of education to incorporate their tools into the classroom. At the California State Universities, where I work as a postdoctoral researcher, there was recently a multimillion-dollarof ChatGPT licenses for all students and staff. There are already initiatives being spun up to integrate AI-based personalized education into the engineering college, and more likely to come.The corporations at the helm are not known for their love of information democracy, nor for their commitments to justice, equity, or peace. Consider movements to stop the genocide in Palestine. In 2023, Human Rights Watch wrote aon internal protests against its involvement with Israel’s military, firing employees who speak out against the tech giant’s dealings.a staggering 16,000 book bans in public schools in the U.S. since 2021, a level not seen since the McCarthy era. Afrom the World Population Review shows that in 2025, 20 states have signed bans on teaching critical race theory into law. The Trump administration hasIt is not outside the realm of possibility to imagine Big Tech complying with far-right directives to ban information, as the industry has already shown shocking acceptance of its role building systems forJust as in the early days of the internet, tech companies are gearing their marketing of educational AI systems toward visions of democratized information and equity. At first, the internet was alsoas a democratizing force in the world due to its ability to open information access for all. But now, in 2025, we know the multitude of ways the internet has been twisted by corporate and government influence: biased search results, information censorship, flagrant proliferation of misinformation, paywalls, and targeted advertisements. Now imagine a world where educational AI does become as widespread as these companies would like. In every classroom, there are AI systems that students have access to for discussion and information. Teachers are using AI tools to structure their lesson plans and curricula. Eventually, if the forces looking to cut educational costs have their way, we might live in a world where teachers are a thing of the past; students may be more used to learning from “intelligent” machines than from other human beings. These visions are not my own: They come directly from marketing materials from educational AI companies, universities, and foundations committed to eroding public education.argue on their websites that teachers are irreplaceable, but then continue to show how their tools can do core responsibilities of a teacher’s job: create lesson plans, quizzes, tests, directly tutor and converse with students. Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence group convened faculty and industry leaders for an, where they argue AI can “provide real-time feedback and suggestions to teachers ,” “summarize the classroom dynamics… includ student speaking time,” and “help teachers stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in their field. For example, a biology teacher would have AI update them on the latest breakthroughs in cancer research, or leverage AI to update their curriculum.” These companies’ generative AI tools are now beingYet after AI takes care of the lesson planning, materials creation, tutoring, classroom management, and post-class reflection, what is left? These arguments seem to be a veiled cover for further privatization of education through technology, which hasby Williamson & Eynon, warned that AI and edtech solutions have been heavily funded by foundations like the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and Gates Foundation, promising underfunded schools that they will be provided free learning programs. If AI is used to do everything these companies say it will, there will be strong pressures on underfunded schools to cut costs — likely through teaching hours. In these scenarios, there is a crucial piece of democratic society lost. Instead of having educational power distributed among thousands of teachers who have autonomy and freedom to resist educational policy they deem corrupt, this future world exerts top-down educational power via a few companies. Totalitarianism — as described by luminaries such as Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Carl Friedrich — enacts the total control of a population through force, fear, media control, and crucially, takeover of education. Yet, as Shoshana Zuboff articulates in her work, the totalitarianisms of Mussolini and Stalin required “henchmen, and their henchmen, and their henchmen” — a vast network of humans to do the work. If education became predominantly conducted by AI systems, the prospect is far simpler: Totalitarian education can be orchestrated by a few engineers. If a policy was passed to ban critical race theory, Google, Meta, and OpenAI need only compel workers to change the code and deploy an update that instantly suppresses critical thought for millions of students. These systems are a dictator’s dream, the perfect infrastructure for the imposition of totalitarianism.dedicates a section to “protect free speech and American values.” It pushes for “AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflect truth rather than social engineering agendas.” Among these social engineering agendas it lists things like “misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” It declares that any LLM contractors working with government must “ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.” Already, we are seeing a desire from far right, authoritarian forces to censor AI systems. Having human teachers, who are capable of dissent, protest, and subversion in the face of unjust orders, is a key element of a democratic society. Yet this danger is buried under discussions of equity, efficiency, and personalized learning.As of now, much of the critical focus on educational AI that has made it into mainstream press is focused on whether AI is actually. While that discussion is important, its significance it pales in comparison to a discussion of technologically mediated education control. There is an urgent need to bring these considerations into the broader critical discourse, or else we risk missing the chance to stop this takeover. As we are beginning to see in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s dismantling of higher education, it is far more difficult to build back social systems than to destroy them. Once AI systems are widely integrated into classrooms, pedagogy is altered to fit this new model, and teaching capacity is reduced in the name ofRight now, we have a chance to resist the takeover before it spreads and deepens. But we must act together, and quickly, if we are to stop the ushering in of a new age of totalitarian information control.As Trump tightens his authoritarian grip on free speech, independent media is increasingly necessary. Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from on the ground in Gaza, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis, and more. Our work is possible thanks to reader support. Help Truthout catalyze change and social justice — make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation today.Nicholas Rabb is a postdoctoral researcher at California State University, Los Angeles, studying STEM education. He holds a PhD in computer science and cognitive science from Tufts University, where he studied misinformation and sociopolitical dimensions of emerging technology.
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