AI, Education, and Academic Publishing in between Knowledge Capitalism and Socialism

This paper explores the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), higher education, and academic publishing within the framework of knowledge socialism, a concept promoting a truly free and equitable exchange of ideas based on collective ownership of the means of knowledge creation and equality in the social relations of knowledge production. Knowledge socialism, rooted in the Marxist critique of capitalism, is to be understood vis-à-vis knowledge capitalism featuring privatised regulation of the production and circulation of knowledge and the transformation of knowledge into exchange values in the marketplace. While the two systems appear to represent mutually exclusive orientations, they are both fluid, always in motion, and meet each other in a reality of in-betweenness. With an understanding of the knowledge capitalism/socialism problematics, this paper then discusses how AI technologies disrupt existing paradigms of academic publishing and scholarship, enabling decentralised knowledge creation, open publishing, and democratised learning. Meanwhile, challenges such as algorithmic bias, corporate acquisition, and ethical issues threaten to undermine the progressive potential of AI. This paper argues that AI's capacity to tip the balance between knowledge socialism and capitalism is hardly questionable. However, such power needs to be ethically guided and directed by consensual efforts prioritising equity, transparency, and openness if it is to catalyse knowledge socialism.