Part III. AI, Hybrid Intelligence, and Postdigital Selfhood

Abstract

This chapter rethinks learner agency in the age of generative AI by shifting attention from the skills of using technology to the conditions through which selfhood is formed. Rather than treating GenAI as a tool to be adopted, resisted, or regulated, it approaches it as a mediating presence that participates in how learners think, express, and recognise themselves. Drawing on Mark Wrathhall’s Heideggerian understanding of the self as a spatial pattern of responsiveness, the chapter argues that systems like ChatGPT now shape the field in which learning and meaning emerge. To address this, it introduces the concept of solicitation literacy: a new form of discernment through which learners and educators can sense how their orientation, tone, and judgment are being quietly tuned by generative systems. This literacy is not technical but existential. It concerns the ongoing work of maintaining agential coherence and presence while co-working with AI. The chapter concludes by outlining pedagogical practices that might help students cultivate this awareness, reframing education not as mastery over technology but as the shared craft of staying recognisably human within it.