Unseen ethical paradoxes of inclusive education in the age of artificial intelligence

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in education is frequently presented as a means of enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and personalisation. Yet its implications for educating inclusively remain conceptually underexplored. This article addresses how AI-driven logics of standardisation, optimisation, and prediction reconfigure the ethical, epistemological, and professional foundations of inclusive educational practices. Adopting a critical–interpretive conceptual approach, the analysis draws on international policy discourses, peer-reviewed academic literature, and ethical debates at the intersection of inclusive education and digital governance. Through an iterative analytical process, the paper identifies three structural paradoxes that emerge when AI is mobilised in inclusive contexts: tensions between universality and singularity, control and uncertainty, and professional reflexivity and managerial constraint. The findings show how these paradoxes reshape policy rationales and educational practices, increasingly reframing inclusive education as a technocratic process of optimisation rather than an ethical and relational endeavour. The article argues that engaging AI in inclusive educational contexts requires sustained critical reflexivity rather than adaptation to algorithmic rationalities. It concludes by outlining implications for teacher education, ethical governance, and educational technology design, emphasising the need to preserve professional agency, epistemic plurality, and uncertainty as conditions for democratic educational futures.