Description
Artificial intelligence (AI) and Politics and International Relations (IR) pedagogy are deeply intertwined, yet this symbiotic relationship is often missed. AI is a site of political contestation and epistemic disruption but although research on AI governance already examines AI as a political system of power, these insights rarely reach classrooms or shape how we teach about technology . At the same time, IR offers a rich conceptual toolkit for interrogating AI’s societal impacts, from legitimacy and authority to justice and pluralism. AI pedagogy benefits enormously from IR’s critical traditions, while IR education must now grapple with the algorithmic systems reshaping how knowledge is produced, validated, contested, and distributed. This roundtable explores how these two domains can – and must – inform one another.
Participants will explore how IR concepts, including sovereignty, legitimacy, epistemic authority, and global justice, can illuminate the political dimensions of AI in education and society. We will examine how AI challenges traditional knowledge systems, how algorithmic governance reshapes accountability, and how IR’s critical traditions can equip students to interrogate these shifts. Importantly, the roundtable will ask how IR’s commitment to diverse epistemologies and postcolonial theory can counter the epistemic dominance of Western-developed AI systems.
