Denaturalizing “Intelligence” in Higher Education: AI as a Rupture to Imagining and Manifesting Sustainable and Anti‐colonial Literacies

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has threatened higher education (HE). In doing so it has granted a portal that makes visible the dominant paradigm that has long defined what “intelligence” is and the narrow set of knowledges and literacies sanctioned for its pursuit. In this paper, we orient our thinking from this clarifying moment, asking: beyond these limits, what intelligences should educators value and nurture for sustainable and anti‐colonial futures, and how might we support these through educational practices in HE? We also pause to reflect on the ways in which AI might move learners' pursuits of intelligence in more expansive directions. This orientation, we argue, provides a means to unsettle the hierarchies of intelligence that we live with/out, and a pathway to (re)direct AI's potential toward just and hopeful ends.