Teachers’ Busywork, Moral Entanglement, and the Automation of Responsibility

Abstract The use of AI in school settings has received widespread attention in recent years. However, there are many unresolved practical and ethical issues surrounding educational AI. In this paper, we contribute to this ongoing debate by examining how AI affects the role and responsibilities of educators. We argue that educational AI will decrease moral entanglement, and consequently teachers’ sense of responsibility. On the one hand, this makes it questionable whether teachers will willingly assume new duties introduced by AI or whether others are justified in expecting them to do so. On the other, it raises concerns about broader shifts to teachers’ professional and personal values and commitments. Moral entanglement is the idea that one can become entangled with other entities based on relational features of our personal identity and commitments. Applied to teachers and students, this entanglement results in the emergence of certain responsibilities and a willingness to take responsibility, the strength of which will be mediated by the introduction of AI in the classroom. We argue that current mainstream AI tools will reduce the number and depth of teacher-student interactions, increase the distance between teachers and students, and alienate teachers by transforming their role in the classroom. Thus, these technologies will reduce moral entanglement between students, change teachers’ professional roles and teachers and decrease teachers’ sense of responsibility. On this basis, we discuss how the idea of moral entanglement can be used for the evaluation of the impact that instrumentally-minded interventions have on the relational work undertaken in care-centric professions.