Algorithmic care: Bernard Stiegler and the meaning of education in the age of AI

The paper re-evaluates Bernard Stiegler’s concepts of pharmacology and general organology to propose a theory of algorithmic care within the digital educational domain. While the current technical evolution is frequently seen through a reductive computational-functionalist lens, which, as argued by Stiegler, facilitates symbolic misery and the proletarianisation of cognitive life, this paper offers a slightly more nuanced synthesis. Integrating Reza Negarestani’s reformulation of functionalism as a recursive, self-correcting process of reprogramming intelligence shows how a correctly oriented computational architecture can enhance Stiegler’s organological view. By demonstrating how the psychopower of contemporary algorithms and Large Language Models (LLMs) disrupts the temporal processes essential to deep learning, the paper proposes moving from plain automation to dis-automatisation. This critical move depends on the figure of the amateur, a new image of the educator who, as both steward and critical inheritor of symbolic heritage, leverages the functionalism intrinsic to technical life to explore new circuits of transindividuation. In this sense, a pedagogy of care demands a retro-causal revolution, entailing a recursive retrieval of memory that transforms the digital pharmakon into a site of collective individuation and educational renewal.