Teaching in the AI Era: Sustainable Digital Education through Ethical Integration and Teacher Empowerment

This article critically examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education through the dual lenses of sustainability and ethics, grounded in a Marxian-inspired analysis of academic labour. Drawing on a survey of 395 educators in Northern Cyprus, the study finds that AI-driven transformations in teaching are accompanied by significant experiences of alienation among educators. Four interrelated dimensions of alienation are identified: (1) Alienation from the product of academic labour, (2) Alienation from the educational process, (3) Alienation from professional identity (species-being), and (4) Alienation from interpersonal relations. Notably, educators with positive perceptions of AI experienced significantly lower alienation across all dimensions, suggesting that when AI is perceived as a supportive tool aligned with educators’ values, its integration is more sustainable. However, optimism alone cannot resolve the structural tensions inherent in AI implementation. These findings underscore the need for educational institutions to adopt ethically grounded, sustainable AI governance frameworks that prioritise transparency, human oversight, participatory decision-making, and professional autonomy.