Intellectual Stewardship: Re-adapting Human Minds for Creative Knowledge Work in the Age of AI

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of intellectual stewardship as a human-centered framework to guide responsible and creative knowledge work in AI-augmented learning environments, emphasizing ethical, contextual, and community considerations.

Contribution

It proposes five core principles for adapting human minds to AI-enhanced knowledge work, emphasizing wisdom, responsibility, and social responsibility in learning practices.

Findings

Framework guides responsible AI-infused learning practices

Highlights importance of ethical and contextual awareness

Encourages development of meta-level dispositions for wisdom

Abstract

Background: Amid the opportunities and risks introduced by generative AI, learning research needs to envision how human minds and responsibilities should re-adapt as AI augments or automates various tasks and enters daily learning, knowledge work, and social life. Approach: Drawing on theories of learning, intelligence, and knowledge creation, this conceptual paper proposes intellectual stewardship as a human-centered, conceptually grounded framework for advancing creative learning practices with AI. Key points: Students and teachers work as responsible governors of intellectual processes distributed across human and artificial systems, guided by five core principles. Being knowledge-wise involves understanding the evolving state of knowledge and taking purposeful actions to advance it. Being intelligence-wise emphasizes making informed choices about how to orchestrate distributed cognitive processes and resources. Being context-wise requires sensitivity to recognize opportunities and risks. Being ethics-wise foregrounds ethical judgment, responsibility, and care in the use of knowledge and intellectual power. Finally, self- and community-growing defines the overarching purpose, aligning intellectual work with personal development and the advancement of collective well-being. Contribution: The principles provide a lens for viewing the adaptation of human minds in AI-infused learning environments, calling for the development of meta-level dispositions and capabilities that characterize wisdom-oriented, socially responsible knowledge builders in the AI age.