The University in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Interdisciplinary Education, Knowledge and Responsibility

Abstract

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has become one of the most consequential institutional challenges of the twenty-first century. The university, as a historical institution of knowledge production and transmission, stands before a profound transformation that exceeds the ordinary logic of technological adaptation. The integration of AI into educational space undermines the legitimacy of traditional forms of knowledge, generating new epistemological questions: What is knowledge, if its generation is possible without human cognition? Who is the author, if a text emerges from the co-creation of a human and an algorithm? Where does institutional responsibility end, when an institution incorporates these tools into the learning process — with or without explicit permission?  This paper examines these questions through the frameworks of critical theory and the sociology of education. The theoretical scaffolding is built around a revisitation of three foundational concepts: the status of knowledge, authorship, and institutional responsibility. The interrelation of these concepts is being recast in educational research — from Foucault’s power-knowledge nexus and Barthes’s “death of the author” to Biesta’s rethinking of the “leaderful” function of education. In the context of AI, this theoretical debate gains new urgency: the algorithm generates text but bears no responsibility; the student signs the work but authorship is in question; the university sets policy but frequently lags behind technological reality.  These questions are particularly consequential in the context of interdisciplinary university education. It is precisely interdisciplinarity — the crossing of boundaries between fields of knowledge, methodological hybridization, and the encounter of distinct epistemic cultures — that is most profoundly altered by AI. Where a disciplinary framework still maintains certain reference points for assessing authorship and legitimate knowledge, interdisciplinary space loses these orientations far more rapidly. AI is most effective precisely where knowledge does not belong to a single logic — and this is exactly the space where creative, critical, and applied forms of thinking coexist. The interdisciplinary university, in this sense, is not only the site of greatest disruption but also the most productive laboratory for thinking through what knowledge and responsibility mean in the age of intelligent machines.  Accordingly, the aim of this research is: to analyze the impact of artificial intelligence on the function and legitimation of the university as an institution; to develop a theoretical framework enabling educational policymakers to assess the ethical and social implications of AI integration; and to outline recommendations for the Georgian context — specifically in the field of interdisciplinary university education.  The main research objectives are: to identify the epistemological shifts provoked by artificial intelligence; to critically revisit the concepts of authorship and academic integrity in the context of AI; to develop new models of academic integrity and institutional policy.  The empirical basis of the research draws on a mixed-methods design encompassing: desk research — analysis of international scholarly literature, European Union education policy documents, and Bologna Process framework regulations; an online structured survey conducted among academic staff and students across seven Georgian higher education institutions of varying profiles; and 8–10 semi-structured interviews with experts, administrators, and educators. The diversity of institutions — spanning humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts — enables a systemic analysis of the interdisciplinary context and facilitates cross-field comparison, making it possible to map both the shared logic and the specific variations of AI’s impact across different knowledge domains.  This paper enters into critical dialogue with both European and local educational discourse, and takes into account the specificities of the Georgian educational space within the context of European integration. Its ambition is neither technological pessimism nor optimism, but analytical precision: AI is part of our world — but in the context of the interdisciplinary university, this challenge is particularly acute, since it is precisely in this space that the most intensive transformation of knowledge is taking place. How the university comes to understand and govern this space will determine whether the institution preserves the ethical commitments that justify its existence.