AI Deepens Inequality, Reshapes Higher Education

Rapid advances in AI are transforming universities and higher education worldwide, reshaping teaching, research, and operations and prompting regional initiatives like the Arab Universities Center for Artificial Intelligence to foster collaboration. The effects are uneven: an emerging “AI capital divide” lets well-capitalized companies deploy costly automation at scale, threatening smaller firms and potentially exacerbating inequities in higher education unless institutions provide shared access or student-facing tools. Students and researchers are also building promising “AI for good” applications—autonomous triage robots, safe-driving simulators, and sonar tools for oyster mapping—that showcase beneficial uses of the technology. Critics warn that reliance on Big Tech models and corporate data practices (including scraping) risks outsourcing judgment, eroding epistemic vigilance, deskilling essential cognitive abilities, and undermining academic independence and knowledge production. Observers call for education-sector adaptation—microcredentials, skills training, policy, funding, and institutional safeguards—to capture AI’s benefits while preventing economic displacement and preserving critical thinking.