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Some moments in history do not announce themselves with disruption or alarm. They slip quietly into everyday life and only later reveal how deeply they have reshaped us. The growing presence of artificial intelligence in children’s lives feels like one of those moments. Not because of dramatic breakthroughs but because something intimate is shifting: how reality itself is encountered.

In this blog post we argue that predictive digital platforms increasingly place children in a state of ontological capture, where behaviour is preemptively steered towards designed obedience rather than independent judgment. As learning environments move from active thinking towards machinic simulation, children risk becoming passive users within a metric-driven society rather than participants in a shared world.

From tool to ontology: How AI reshapes experience

In our recent work (Gardner-McTaggart & Blyth, 2025), we describe ontological capture not as abstract philosophy but as a lived condition. Ontology here refers to how the world is experienced. Ontological capture occurs when digital and algorithmic systems no longer simply support learning, but begin to organise how children experience time, attention, judgment and even their sense of self. Technology shifts from being a tool children use to becoming a framework that quietly shapes what can be noticed, felt and imagined. In this sense, the ‘technology of the self’ (Foucault, 2007) has become the infrastructure of the self.

Algorithms increasingly anticipate behaviour, guide choices and optimise responses before reflection has time to form. Childhood is lived inside predictive systems where futures arrive before they are imagined, shaping subjectivity from the inside out. The rhythm of becoming is altered. Instead of dwelling or hesitation, children are drawn into constant responsiveness to algorithmic prompts. We describe this as obedience by design: not discipline imposed from above, but gradual habituation to systems that decide in advance what it is we need to know, do and become.

Obedience by design and the quiet reordering of childhood

The implications of this shift are profound. Thinkers such as Anders (2018), Baudrillard (2019) and Debord (2011), describe a dissolution of the real in which signs replace substance, spectacle displaces lived experience, and machinic pace renders human temporality obsolete. In childhood, this appears as affective loops in which algorithms anticipate behaviour, feed it back to the user and normalise responsiveness. Childhood becomes less a space of open becoming and more a substrate for predictive optimisation.

This matters because education has never been only about transmitting knowledge. It has always been concerned with forming persons capable of judgment, responsibility and ethical imagination (Biesta, 2016). When learning is organised through dashboards, rankings and instant feedback, it risks becoming performance for the system rather than conversation with others. Children quickly learn how systems work, and achievement becomes about mastering rules rather than engaging with meaning. Slow dialogue between teachers, students and others is displaced by responsiveness to metrics.

‘Uncertainty is the ground upon which ethical judgment, responsibility and care are formed. Without it, education risks becoming administrative rather than formative.’

The danger here is not dramatic. It is gentle. When children grow up in environments that constantly predict, score and optimise them, uncertainty begins to feel like a flaw rather than a condition of life. Yet uncertainty is the ground upon which ethical judgment, responsibility and care are formed. Without it, education risks becoming administrative rather than formative.

Stewardship, uncertainty and the work of education

Ontological capture, however, is never complete. Education still carries a counterforce. We describe this as stewardship: not leadership as control, but guardianship; not education as production, but protection of the conditions for becoming. Stewardship prioritises time, attention, relation and care, making room for what does not optimise well: silence, unmeasured play and stories that unfold without being scored. Through non-instrumental play, embodied storytelling and arts-based learning, education can act as a form of ontological repair, restoring depth in a culture that increasingly flattens experience into data.

This is a historically significant moment. For the first time, childhood itself is being shaped by infrastructures that preempt reflection and imagination. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in education. It already does. The question is whether education will remain a protected space where children can encounter uncertainty, care and ethical responsibility, or whether it becomes another interface of algorithmic governance.

References

Anders, G. (2018). The obsolescence of the human, Volume I: On the soul in the age of the second industrial revolution. Verso.

Baudrillard, J. (2019). Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press.

Biesta, G. (2016). The beautiful risk of education. Routledge.

Debord, G. (2011). The society of the spectacle. Rebel Press.

Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977–78. ‎ Palgrave Macmillan.

Gardner-McTaggart, A. & Blyth, C. (2025). Ontological capture and obedience by design. AI & Society. Advance online publication.