The mirror metaphor and AI: reflections and realities on education from an emergence perspective

Metaphors are pivotal in shaping how we conceptualise emergent technologies, providing cognitive frameworks that influence understanding and discourse. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been framed through various metaphors which often reflect deterministic views of technology. This theoretical article examines the mirror metaphor, as developed by Vallor 2024. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an age of Machine Thinking. 1st ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197759066.003.0002, which positions AI as a reflection of societal realities: biased, flawed, and shaped by sociotechnical contingencies. While the mirror metaphor offers valuable descriptive and normative insights, this article argues that its explicative power can be enriched through an ontological lens. By exploring concepts such as emergence, stratified reality, and relationality, the article highlights how causal mechanisms between AI and society remain obscured when viewed solely as feedback loops. Using examples of critical thinking and personalisation in education, the analysis demonstrates how critical realism can uncover the deeper structures and causal interactions shaping AI's role in educational environments. This article underscores the importance of metaphors in framing the debate on AI in education while advocating for a normative discussion and ontological perspectives to better capture the complexity of AI’s socio-technical entanglements.