AI for Social Responsibility: Critical Reflections on the Marketization of Education

Abstract

This study critically examines how Artificial Intelligence for Social Responsibility (AI for SR) is enacted within Thai education, using this Global South context to expose the universal dynamics of educational marketization. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy and Habermas’s theory of lifeworld, the research employs a qualitative design grounded in critical phenomenology. Analysis of interviews, observations, and policy documents reveals that AI for SR is driven less by ethical participation than by policy compliance, funding agendas, and portfolio-driven competition. This dynamic transform responsibility from a moral practice into symbolic capital. Students become producers of symbolic output, and educators act as image managers for institutional displays. The study concludes by proposing a critical pedagogical framework that reclaims AI for SR as a public good, emphasizing dialog and social justice to resist this commodification.