From Human Capital to Algorithmic Capital: The Impact of AI on the Development of the Education System

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, the education field is undergoing a paradigm shift from the traditional accumulation of “human capital” to the dominance of “algorithmic capital”. In the wave of digital transformation, the education system is facing structural changes in the knowledge production mechanism, value evaluation standards and talent training models. This study focuses on how AI technology reconstructs the form and operation logic of capital in the field of education and systematically analyzes the deep impact of algorithmic capital on education goal setting, knowledge dissemination path, and education governance models. Its theoretical significance lies in breaking through the explanatory framework of traditional human capital theory and constructing a cognitive map of educational capital in the era of algorithms. The practical value is reflected in revealing the algorithmic trend of educational resource allocation and the crisis of educational equity and subjectivity caused by it and providing an early warning mechanism for dealing with the risk of algorithmic power intervening in the education system. The study further points out that this transformation of capital form not only reshapes the technical infrastructure of the education ecosystem but also poses new challenges to the ethical norms of talent training and the public nature of knowledge production, which provides a key thinking dimension for the adaptive reform of the global education system in the intelligent era.