THEY are not policymakers, not professors, not tech CEOs – just a group of final-year students in Malaysia who have decided they will not wait quietly while the future of their classrooms is rewritten by machines.
At the University of Nottingham Malaysia, these students have published ‘While the Machine Learns’, a manifesto that insists artificial intelligence (AI) in education must serve human judgement, not replace it.
For them, it is more than an academic exercise; it is a bid to ensure their generation’s voice is heard before the rules of an AI-driven world are set without their input.
“We are writing this because no one else will,” reads the manifesto. “We are writing this because the world has become too complex for the systems we inherited – climate unravelling, democracies fracturing. Truth itself is under siege.
“We need to understand this moment more urgently than any other generation. As has been proven by the endless headlines about ‘the crisis of higher education’, the university cannot catch up.
“We will not reject AI. We will not worship it. We will use it with intention, not deference. We claim the right to shape how AI enters our learning. We assert that education belongs to us, not to algorithms.”
What the manifesto entails
What began as an assignment under the “Writing for the Media” module – for the university’s International Communications Studies students – evolved into a substantive call for the ethical implementation of AI in education.
Among the 15 “non-negotiable” principles outlined in the manifesto are:
> AI education should be critical, not merely instrumental. It should teach how systems work, who builds them, and whom they serve.
> AI education should be transparent and accountable. It should expose training data, assumptions and limitations, and require explanations for outcomes – taught as a tool, but tested as a system.
> AI education should be person-centred and participatory. It should position students as co-creators of knowledge, not passive users of tools. Build skills, but defend doubt.
> AI education must recognise that genuine creativity originates from human inspiration, rooted in lived experience and imperfect perceptions of the real world.
As Kristin Tan Kai Yen, 22, the manifesto’s outreach ambassador, puts it: “A student-authored manifesto on AI education is both urgent and universal.
“In his Encyclical Letter, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the importance of subsidiarity, where decisions should be made closest to the people who will be directly affected by the consequences of that decision.”
Distinct roles
Highlighting the adverse impacts of unchecked AI integration, Tan points out that some fresh graduates are becoming redundant even before entering the workforce – an example that underscores the importance of including youth voices in policymaking.
“Students are a demographic greatly affected by the rapid integration of AI into society; fresh graduates are rendered redundant even before they enter the workforce.
“We refuse to sit back as policies that affect how we live, work and exist in the world are being made without taking young people’s concerns into consideration.
“‘While the Machine Learns’ is our collective position on that which we refuse to give up in the age of AI, namely, humanity in all its grandeur and brokenness.”
Tan stresses the need to clearly distinguish between the roles of universities and AI.
“The university, as well as other educational institutions, is a space with some of the greatest potential for integrating different fields of knowledge. But to ask how AI and education should work together, we should ask what the university is for and what AI is for, and for whom.
“To understand the purpose of education, we need to consider how we conceive ourselves as beings. This can be daunting, but the students of this module have taken a step of bravery towards answering that.”
Behind the scenes
The manifesto’s development editor, Erin Amaris Hendrikse, 23, says one aspect of the module from which the manifesto emerged involved learning to consult AI as a strategic analyst.
“Generative AI was not used to produce content for our project. We wrote the script ourselves and asked it to analyse our action plan in light of our project aims.
“When it gave feedback, we broke it down and asked: ‘Did it misunderstand our instructions? Did it make incorrect assumptions about our context, target audience or argument?’ Then we sifted through its answers, applying what was relevant and rejecting the rest.”
Hendrikse says that while AI can help identify blind spots, human judgement and lived experience ultimately determine outcomes.
“In this way, we avoid outsourcing our cognition to the machine.”
Delving deeper into the manifesto, she says it aims to promote student voices throughout all stages of policymaking – from start to finish.
“One thing we have seen commonly misunderstood about students’ and young people’s experience with AI is their attitude towards it. Our project, as well as external research, shows that a significant portion of young people are not fully supportive of AI.
“‘Ambivalent’ is perhaps the most accurate word. Young people are highly aware of and vocal about the negative effects the digital age has had on our lives, such as feelings of social alienation.
“At the same time, there is a growing preference for grounded, embodied and undigitised experiences. These sentiments are translated into actionable principles in our manifesto.”
For more information on the manifesto, go to ai-autopsy.com.
