Beyond Tools: Generative AI as Epistemic Infrastructure in Education

As generative AI rapidly integrates into educational infrastructures worldwide, it transforms how knowledge gets created, validated, and shared, yet current discourse inadequately addresses its implications as epistemic infrastructure mediating teaching and learning. This paper investigates how AI systems function as epistemic infrastructures in education and their impact on human epistemic agency. Adopting a situated cognition perspective and following a value-sensitive design approach, the study conducts a technical investigation of two representative AI systems in educational settings, analyzing their impact on teacher practice across three dimensions: affordances for skilled epistemic actions, support for epistemic sensitivity, and implications for long-term habit formation. The analysis reveals that current AI systems inadequately support teachers' skilled epistemic actions, insufficiently foster epistemic sensitivity, and potentially cultivate problematic habits that prioritize efficiency over epistemic agency. To address these challenges, the paper recommends recognizing the infrastructural transformation occurring in education, developing AI environments that stimulate skilled actions while upholding epistemic norms, and involving educators in AI design processes -- recommendations aimed at fostering AI integration that aligns with core educational values and maintains human epistemic agency.