What is it about?
This work explores how artificial intelligence can help people see the hidden patterns, tensions, and assumptions that shape their institutions and choices. Instead of copying human creativity, Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to reveal contradictions in how we think about learning, progress, and innovation—helping people reflect, imagine alternatives, and make more thoughtful decisions about the futures they build.
Featured Image
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This work is important because it challenges the idea that AI should simply automate or imitate human thinking. It presents a new way to use AI as both a refractive and reflective partner—one that helps people uncover hidden assumptions and imagine alternative futures. At a time when technology shapes every decision, it shows how AI can deepen understanding instead of replacing it.
Perspectives
This chapter grew from my search to find a more reflective role for AI—one that helps us think rather than think for us. It represents an attempt to reconnect critical theory, creativity, and technology, showing that insight often comes from tension, contradiction, and the willingness to exercise the imagination to look beneath the surface.
David Atkinson
York St John University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Pictures at an Exhibition—AI-Driven Surrealist Futures: The Case of Reimagining Higher Education through Aesthetic Critique, September 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.30965/9783969753460_003.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Reimagining Capitalism: Applying Negative Dialectics for a Better Future
The philosophy of Applied Negative Dialectics that lies behind this work is detailed in the author's 2023 book.
Thinking The Art of Management Stepping into 'Heidegger's Shoes'
The work is also influenced heavily by the author's aesthetic theorising on the artistic process.
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
