Commentary
Democracy and discernment: the public purpose of the University in a world of ‘AI everywhere’
Abstract
We are entering an era of ‘AI everywhere’, in which Artificial Intelligence is not merely being utilised but integrated into countless aspects of human interaction and occupation. Such is the nature of this integration that AI is not only changing our behaviour but our capabilities. It is also exposing new societal vulnerabilities—particularly in our use of language and the way we access, accumulate, and process information. Communication and information are all-important for the exercise of power, including political power. To hold such power to account, it is imperative that human intelligence remains distinctive and discerning. The inculcation of neoliberalism and endemic thoughtlessness has compromised the capacity of the contemporary University to meet this challenge. This article argues that the need for the University to foster the freedom of human intelligence is not only a moral obligation but an urgent democratic necessity.
Keywords
artificial intelligencedemocracyhuman intelligenceneoliberalismthe UniversitythoughtlessnessCopyright statement
© The author(s) 2026. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Hayward, K. (2026), ‘Democracy and discernment: the public purpose of the University in a world of “AI everywhere”’, Journal of the British Academy, 14(1): a04 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/014.a04Crossref
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