Unpacking Predominant Narratives about Generative AI and Education: A Starting Point for Teaching Critical AI Literacy and Imagining Better Futures

In this article, I draw on both personal experience and professional literature to explore common narratives and assumptions about generative AI (GenAI) and the roles they play in discussions about GenAI’s place in education, libraries, and information literacy. In particular, I explore how misleading narratives of GenAI’s cognitive capacities and inevitability frequently minimize its present and potential harms and encourage people to rapidly and uncritically integrate GenAI technologies into their everyday lives in order to remain relevant in the workplace and in society. Recognizing the pervasiveness of these narratives and reflecting on my own process of making sense of them while also engaging with other framings of GenAI, I advocate for librarians and fellow educators to grow a collective practice of critical inquiry into GenAI that can help inform our teaching practices and our engagement in what is sometimes called critical AI literacy .