Resisting Overdependency and Unlearning: Ethical Postulates for Responsible AI and Automation in Tourism

Tourism is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, from revenue management and biometric identification to smart destination platforms. While these technologies promise efficiency and personalization, they also generate ethical challenges that go beyond data protection and compliance. Current debates often reduce ethics to checklists of transparency and fairness, overlooking deeper issues of agency, authenticity, welfare, and power. This paper develops a plural-ethics framework that counters overdependency and unlearning. Where human judgment and creativity erode through overreliance on automated systems, overdependency and unlearning kick in. Drawing on Kantian deontology, utilitarian consequentialism, existentialist authenticity, and Bourdieusian field theory, we propose five normative postulates: Agency Preservation, Welfare Accounting, Authenticity Safeguards, Power Reflexivity, and Ethical Pluralism. These postulates are conceptual claims that reframe ethics in tourism technology as an open field of tension rather than a compliance regime. The contribution is threefold. First, we demonstrate how philosophical and sociological traditions illuminate critical ethical dimensions of digital transformation. Second, we articulate a vocabulary that connects tourism ethics to wider debates in responsible AI and technology governance. Third, we provide an agenda for empirical research on automation bias, deskilling, and platform power. By situating ethics as a plural and reflexive practice, this paper positions tourism as a domain that can actively contribute to global discussions on responsible AI deployment.