AI, technofascism, and the unmaking of higher education. An interview with Stefan Popenici
TL;DR
Stefan Popenici argues that universities are living through a ‘psychotic episode’: a break with reality that leaves them cheering for technologies designed by financial elites and funded by the military.
Abstract
In this interview, Stefan Popenici – one of the most prominent critical voices on artificial intelligence in higher education, and author of Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures (2022) and Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2026) – argues that universities are living through a ‘psychotic episode’: a break with reality that leaves them cheering for technologies designed by financial elites and funded by the military. Tracing GenAI’s origins from an Epstein-funded symposium and the Pentagon’s chequebook to the eugenic roots of Silicon Valley’s culture, Popenici contends that AI is the political project of ‘technofascist’ billionaires rather than a neutral educational tool. He defends his analogy between AI and the lead poisoning of the Roman Empire – pervasive, invisible and cognitively corrosive – dissects the collapse of academic credibility exemplified by a recent AI-generated opinion piece that urged students to do their own work, and portrays the ‘AI-teacher’ as an instrument of indoctrination rather than a mere substitute for human educators. Refusing the ritual language of ‘opportunities and risks’, he explains his decision to write entirely without AI as a political act of resistance to abrutisation and dehumanisation – a stance the interviewers probe in a friendly disagreement over critical AI literacy. The interview closes on an unexpectedly hopeful note: graduates booing AI evangelists at commencement ceremonies signal an emerging resistance, and books – habent sua fata libelli – have their own fate.