AI, knowledge socialism and education: Public infrastructures and the AI Educational Mode of Development

This paper explores the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge socialism, and education, focusing on how AI reshapes knowledge production, educational governance, and pedagogical labor. Drawing on Marxist political economy and critical scholarship on AI in education, the paper situates knowledge socialism as a normative framework that challenges the commodification and enclosure of educational knowledge under contemporary digital capitalism.The concept of the AI Educational Mode of Development is introduced as an analytical lens to examine emerging configurations of public AI infrastructures, open educational systems, and human–machine collaboration. While such developments are frequently associated with claims of democratization and educational equity, the paper highlights the structural tensions that accompany AI-mediated education, including those between public provision and democratic governance, openness and centralization, cultural diversity and epistemic standardization, and automation and educational labor.Selected policy and institutional initiatives are discussed as illustrative cases that reveal both the possibilities and the limits of aligning AI with the normative aspirations of knowledge socialism. Rather than presenting these initiatives as definitive models, the paper treats them as contested governance experiments situated within specific political and institutional contexts. The paper concludes by arguing that AI can contribute to more collective and equitable forms of educational development only under carefully defined social, political, and pedagogical conditions.