AI and Normalizing a Nuclear Renaissance? Worthwhile Curriculum and Human Education in the Anthropocene

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Something about the Human through Fascist Rise and Global Fall

Abstract

This study in Value-Creating Education for Global Citizenship examines A.I. as curriculum relative to the “nuclear Anthropocene” (Max Planck Institute, 2023). Framed theoretically by Schubert’s (2009) “worthwhile” question of curriculum studies and Ikeda Daisaku’s (1988-2015) peacebuilding approaches to A.I., nuclear disarmament, and ningen kyōiku, or “human education,” the study interrogates A.I.’s growing normalization of a nuclear renaissance imbricated in its development (Castelvecchi, 2024) and considers how A.I. redefines not just what and how we teach, but why. Conducted against the backdrop of geopolitical lurches toward anocracies and nuclear war (IAEA, 2023; Jeyaretnam, 2025), the study calls for curricularly concretizing and problematizing nuclearity—as “clean” power, weapon, and co-annihilative force—to disrupt the specter of a global, A.I.-driven nuclear catastrophe.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University