Educational research in hybrid ecosystems: the role of generative AI as a sparring partner

The article examines the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence in educational research as a socio-material and epistemic infrastructure embedded in contemporary regimes of power and knowledge production. It aims to move beyond techno-optimistic and techno-sceptical dichotomies by conceptualising AI as a non-neutral assemblage shaped by platform capitalism, data colonialism, and infrastructural dependencies. Drawing on more-than-human perspectives, the article explores how interactions between researchers and generative systems reconfigure processes of knowledge production and agency. While AI may reinforce existing forms of epistemic control, it can also open spaces for critical inquiry and resistance. To support such possibilities, the paper discusses some practices as ways of reconfiguring human–AI relations and avoiding the delegation of epistemic agency. Rather than treating AI as a device for generating answers, the article proposes understanding it as a dialogic sparring partner capable of provoking questions, challenging assumptions, and reshaping the co-construction of knowledge. The value of AI thus lies not in replacing human judgment but in expanding the dialogical spaces through which knowledge is produced.