From Performance Art to Social Experiment: AI Authors and the “Guardianship Vacuum”in Educational Research

The rise of generative artificial intelligence is reshaping the human-centered order of knowledge production and academic authorship, rendering the controversy over “AI authorship”a pivotal issue that continuously challenges the ethical boundaries and governance capacity of the academic community. For educational research, the risks triggered by such controversies involve not only legal difficulties in responsibility attribution and accountability, but also a structural deficiency in ethical safeguards centered on learner protection, namely the “guardianship vacuum”.Adopting a genealogical method, this paper firstly traced the historical evolution of authorship and the author function in modern academia, clarifying the institutional origin of authors as the anchor of accountability and their particular significance in educational research. Secondly, based on contemporary disputes, it conducted an institutional analysis of recent cases, academic norms, and governance agendas concerning AI authorship. In this paper, it revealed the deficiencies of the existing knowledge governance frameworks in responsibility chains, transparency, and risk identification, as well as their potential impact on educational research. Finally, building on the above analysis, the paper carried out normative construction and proposed a more rigorous ethical and accountability framework tailored to AI-participated educational research. This study aimed to theoretically and institutionally interpret the authorship disputes in the AI era within the high-risk field of educational research, illuminating its unique ethical dilemmas and providing normative reference for subsequent empirical studies and policy formulation.