AI Literacy: An Exercise in Power-Knowledge

2026-07-29

AI Summary

This study addresses a critical gap in existing AI literacy frameworks, which predominantly emphasize technical proficiency and compliant usage while neglecting users’ critical understanding of AI systems and their capacity for governance participation—thereby reinforcing passive consumption over cognitive agency. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of power-knowledge, Freirean critical pedagogy, and digital literacy scholarship, this work proposes an empowerment-oriented, three-dimensional AI literacy paradigm encompassing contextualized use, critical interrogation, and participatory governance. By elevating AI literacy beyond instrumental operation to structural reflection and democratic engagement, the framework confronts epistemic injustices inherent in AI development and offers both a theoretical foundation and practical pathways for advancing social equity and democratizing AI governance.

Abstract

As generative artificial intelligence becomes one of the most significant systems of knowledge production in our society today, questions relating to who can access and shape that production grow increasingly important in our discourse. This paper argues that the existing frameworks for AI literacy, which are dominated by technical competency and responsible-use principles, are insufficient because they enforce a "consumer" orientation toward AI rather than fostering genuine epistemic agency. Based upon Foucault's concept of power-knowledge, Freire's pedagogy of critical consciousness, and scholarship of digital literacy, this paper proposes a reconceptualization of AI literacy as a critical practice that equips individuals not just to use AI systems, but to critically evaluate them, resist their structuring assumptions, and participate in their governance. The paper further argues that unequal access to AI tools in society recapitulates longstanding epistemic injustices, and that a literacy framework oriented toward empowerment must account for these structural inequities. A three-part framework of AI literacy based on the notions of contextual use, critical interrogation, and participatory governance frames this literacy as a cultivation of epistemic "agents" rather than the training of competent consumers of AI-generated information.

Problem

• AI literacy
• epistemic agency
• power-knowledge
• epistemic injustice
• critical consciousness

Innovation

• AI literacy
• critical pedagogy
• power-knowledge
• epistemic agency
• participatory governance