When AI becomes an intellectual intermediary: A situated correspondence framework linking epistemic responsibility, intellectual engagement, and independent capability in higher education

Generative artificial intelligence has unsettled a familiar educational inference: that the quality of an academic product is adequate evidence of the intellectual work performed by the student who submits it. This conceptual article develops the Situated Correspondence Framework, an analytical architecture that connects three moments often treated separately: the intellectual operations a task assigns to the learner, evidence that those operations were enacted during AI-mediated activity, and the capabilities that remain demonstrable when assistance conditions change. The framework distinguishes Assigned Epistemic Responsibility (AER) and Constitutive Intellectual Operations (CIO) from Enacted Intellectual Engagement (EIE), AI-Assisted Performance (AIP), and Demonstrated Independent Capability (DIC), while treating AI Assistance Configuration (AIC) and Situated Opportunity Conditions (SOC) as proximal interpretive conditions rather than learner attributes. Drawing on research on cognitive offloading, human–technology partnership, evaluative judgement, assessment validity, AI literacy, and educational capability, six propositions are formulated for empirical challenge. The contribution is not a new label for offloading, engagement, or independent performance. It lies in linking ex ante intellectual responsibility to observed enactment and later demonstrability without assuming that assisted performance and learner capability coincide. This evidentiary layer extends a broader human-centered learning agenda while leaving open a question that cannot be settled in the abstract: which operations should remain attributable to the learner across different disciplines and assessment purposes?