Refers to a person's ability to take an active role in seeking, evaluating, producing, using, and questioning knowledge versus simply accepting information provided by others. In education, it includes learners taking responsibility for determining what they know, what they need to know, and how their learning can be evaluated.

The concept has become increasingly relevant in the use of AI because AI systems can quickly provide answers, explanations, and synthesized information. Maintaining epistemic agency means that the human remains actively involved in judging the information rather than treating AI-generated information as automatically authoritative.