Beyond technical competence: reconceptualizing AI literacy through critical pedagogy

This article reconceptualizes AI literacy as conscientização rather than as competency. Existing AI literacy frameworks—such as UNESCO’s policy programme, the AI4K12 curriculum, the influential taxonomy of Long and Magerko, as well as their additive critical extensions—share an architectural commitment that positions critique as one capacity alongside others rather than as the orientation from which AI literacy itself emerges. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, John Dewey’s reflective public, feminist standpoint epistemology, and contemporary critical algorithm studies, I propose a constitutive alternative: AI literacy as the development of critical consciousness about socio-technical power, organized through three interrelated dimensions—epistemic reflexivity, political agency, and relational autonomy. These dimensions, which resonate with the philosophical work of Biesta, Stiegler, and Mackenzie, are not three modules of a curriculum, but three faces of one critical consciousness adequate to the algorithmic conjuncture. South Korea’s 2025 AI Digital Textbook initiative, partially withdrawn within months of nationwide deployment, illustrates the argument as a hidden-curriculum case. Educational implications across epistemological, political, and pedagogical interventions follow. The article writes from within the contemporary post-digital conjuncture rather than from outside it.