Mathematical Modelling of Ethical AI Use in Higher Education: A Coordination Game Framework for Future-Facing Learning

Universities have responded to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in noticeably different ways, both internationally and within Spain. So far, the dominant reaction has been defensive, this is, most institutions frame the debate around AI detection, plagiarism, academic integrity and a presumed drop in student effort, prioritizing basic training for academic staff over students. Other group of pioneering universities is doing the opposite, pursuing deeper adoption, and assuming that any policy built on prevention or sanction will not hold. This paper sides with that second view. Obsessing about detection is a dead end, since generated text is increasingly hard to distinguish from human writing, and detectors still misfire too often to be trusted. What universities need instead is a coordinated effort to set clear, course-by-course rules for GenAI use, redesign assessment toward authentic and interdisciplinary assessment that fosters critical thinking and learner autonomy, and build a serious AI-literacy programme that treats students as critical co-creators rather than passive users. The challenge, though, is not only pedagogical. Adoption at university scale also raises organisational, technical, operational, legal and economic questions that have to be solved together. In this context, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) is developing a strategic and sustainable AI policy and adoption framework structured around six dimensions, in which AI functions as an enabler of student autonomy and pedagogical innovation rather than as a threat to be policed.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has entered classrooms faster than teachers have been prepared to use it well, producing a GenAI literacy lag in which technological diffusion outpaces educators' conceptual, pedagogical, and ethical readiness. Established AI literacy frameworks predate the widespread adoption of large language models and, while acknowledging ethics, position it as a discrete competency rather than a constitutive commitment, with equity and agency as supplementary design principles. Recent GenAI-specific efforts address isolated features but remain fragmented. We introduce the Responsible AI Literacy in Education (RAIL-Ed) framework, developed through a systematic review and qualitative framework analysis of 67 studies (2023-2025), grounded in critical, pragmatist, sociocultural, and human-centered traditions (Freire, Dewey, Vygotsky, Shneiderman). RAIL-Ed specifies six interdependent pillars: Technical Fluency, Critical Evaluation, Human-AI Collaboration, Contextual Awareness, Ethical Reasoning, and Empowered Agency, marked by three commitments. It is integrative: the absence of any pillar produces a characteristic pedagogical failure. It is developmental: a three-level rubric (Emerging, Competent, Advanced) specifies how each pillar matures across the K-12 teacher-preparation continuum. It is dialectical: the same generative affordance can deepen or displace learning depending on the literacy a teacher brings to it, making the cultivation of that literacy, not the adoption of the tool, the object of design. By treating ethics, equity, and agency as constitutive, RAIL-Ed offers a theoretically grounded basis for curriculum design, teacher education, and policy, aligned with the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers and the OECD/European Commission AILit Framework. The framework is conceptual, advancing falsifiable propositions for empirical validation.

With the increased use of generative AI (GenAI) applications such as ChatGPT, higher education institutions (HEIs) have released a range of guidelines and policies to direct adoption within their institutions. In computer science (CS) courses GenAI adoption is especially high and the implications for student learning are significant. At the same time, instructors have also been forced to address the use of GenAI as students have started to use it for a range of functions. Currently, comparative analysis of guidance provided by institutions and its uptake in instruction is lacking. In this paper we bridge this gap by comparing institutional and computing course level guidance to better understand this terrain. We utilize secondary analysis of institutional and course syllabi guidelines from higher education institutions in the U.S. classified as research-intensive. Our findings reveal that although institutional guidance is more pro-use, at the course-level the uptake is still guarded. We discuss the implications and propose an instructor-centered framework to guide future adoption of GenAI.