Research Note #3
Why Choice Is Not the Same as Agency
Books democratized knowledge.
Film expanded perception.
Computers expanded computation.
GPS expanded navigation.
AI changes agency.
For centuries, our technologies extended what humans could do.
They amplified human capability while leaving human agency largely intact.
Books changed who had access to knowledge.
Film changed how we experienced ideas, stories, and events.
Computers transformed the scale and speed of calculation.
GPS reduced the cognitive burden of finding our way through the world.
Each technology changed human behaviour.
None eliminated the underlying human capacity.
We still read.
We still imagine.
We still calculate.
We still navigate.
AI feels different.
Not because intelligence is disappearing.
Because AI increasingly participates in decisions once reserved for humans.
It recommends.
It prioritizes.
It summarizes.
It generates.
It nudges.
Sometimes it acts before we realize a decision has been made.
This raises an important question.
Is having more choices the same thing as having more agency?
I do not think so.
Choice is the availability of options.
Agency is the capacity to act intentionally within those options.
Recommendation engines give us choices.
Algorithms give us choices.
AI gives us choices.
But more choices do not automatically produce more agency.
In some cases, the opposite may be true.
When systems increasingly determine what we see, what we read, what we buy, what we learn, and even what we think about next, the question changes.
The question is no longer simply:
What do humans know?
Increasingly, the question becomes:
What remains a human responsibility?
Which decisions should we delegate?
Which decisions should we retain?
Where does assistance end and dependence begin?
These questions matter because humans become skilled at what they practice.
If we stop practicing certain forms of thinking, judgment, or decision-making, those capacities change over time.
This does not make AI a threat.
Nor does it make AI a solution.
It makes AI a negotiation.
The educational challenge of the AI era is not protecting intelligence.
It is protecting agency.
Because the future is unlikely to be a competition between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.
It will be a negotiation over who remains responsible for thinking.
And that feels like a question worth answering ourselves before we ask AI to answer it for us.
Diving Deeper
If these ideas resonate with you, here are a few places to explore them further:
Explores how learners develop intentionality, forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection as active participants in learning.
Examines how agency shifts in environments increasingly shaped by algorithms, platforms, and AI systems.
Extends these ideas into healthcare and explores how agency operates in research, participation, and decision making contexts.
Together, these works explore a common question:
How do humans remain agents in systems increasingly designed to act with, for, and sometimes upon them?
