Forgetting, Remembering, and Memorializing: Cultivating Mnemonic Phronesis for AI‐Mediated Learning in Business Education

ABSTRACT This paper develops the Mnemonic Phronesis Framework, a pedagogical model of AI literacy that aims to help business students recognize and counteract potential distortions generative AI outputs introduce into collective memory. Drawing on Halbwachs' theory of collective memory and Shneiderman's Human‐Centered AI (HCAI) framework, we investigate how mechanisms of algorithmic forgetting, remembering, and memorializing operate when students rely on large language models to understand historical environmental crises and organizational sustainability efforts. We argue that generative AI systems function as somewhat novel memory institutions that selectively curate and distort historical narratives, compressing the moral urgency and human particularity of environmental injustice. Drawing on virtue ethics, particularly the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, we develop a theoretical framework for AI literacy in sustainability‐focused business education that integrates HCAI principles of reliability, safety, and trustworthiness with the cultivation of virtuous engagement with collective environmental memory. This study seeks to foster relatively more authentic, morally formative encounters with sustainability challenges.