IEFInternational Education Forum3083-49022981-8605Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing Pty. Ltd.10.26689/IEF.v4i9.15733ArticleFrom “Assistance” to “Domination”: The Crisis of Alienation and the Reconstruction of Subjectivity in Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligencehttps://artdesignp.com/journal/IEF/4/9/10.26689/IEF.v4i9.15733SunNing2026492026-10-20The deep application of generative artificial intelligence in universities is triggering a subtle crisis of subjectivity. Drawing on the fourfold determinations of Marx’s theory of alienated labor as an analytical framework, this paper examines the forms of alienation that have emerged following AI’s entry into the field of higher education: the estrangement between academic output and the learning subject, the degeneration of learning activity into technological dependence, the subsumption of creativity by instrumental logic, and the fragmentation of the teacher–student community into data nodes. The study finds that the core mechanism of alienation lies in the normalization of “cognitive outsourcing” and the covert operation of technological power, the result of which is to push students from “subjects who control tools” toward “objects controlled by tools.” The key to breaking this impasse lies not in rejecting or restricting technology, but in reaffirming the “species-essence” character of educational activity—establishing critical thinking, meaning construction, and intersubjective communication as inalienable core capacities, and, through institutional reform and a transformation of teaching paradigms, safeguarding human subjectivity within human–machine collaboration.Artificial intelligence, Alienation, Higher education, Subjectivity, Cognitive outsourcing

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