FROM CONTENT TRANSMISSION TO EPISTEMIC CONSTRUCTION: REDESIGNING UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence challenges the university model centered on content transmission and subsequent testing. Large language models can retrieve, synthesize, and recombine information within seconds, but rapid access to information does not constitute reliable knowledge. This conceptual article argues that higher education should shift toward epistemic construction: the process of framing problems, integrating information, verifying sources, exposing assumptions, confronting counterarguments, revising provisional judgments, and defending conclusions. Drawing on Socratic inquiry, medieval disputatio, Popperian falsification, reflective learning, critical-thinking research, and scholarship on artificial intelligence in education, the study proposes the AI-Assisted Epistemic Construction Cycle. The framework positions generative AI not primarily as an answer-producing device, but as a scalable digital devil’s advocate that supports structured intellectual dissent. Implications are developed for faculty roles, student agency, assessment, institutional governance, academic integrity, and future research.