In a recent episode of the Mystery AI-Hype Theater Podcast, special guest Raina Bloom, Reference Services Coordinator for University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, referred to an ad for Google Pixel that aired during the Superbowl this year. In the ad, a man uses Google AI to prepare for a job interview. Bloom noted that the ad offers a “dark” reality, as if the man portrayed says, “I don't have any collaborators. I don't have any colleagues. I don't have any sources of support who can assist me when I'm doing this job interview or doing this research.” The best he can do is to rehearse with his Google-based LLM.
This morning, I saw an interview with the CEO of Nomi AI, which promises an “AI companion with memory and a soul.” Talkpal, an LLM that styles itself as a “language teacher,” promises that clients will learn five times faster. Thetawise and CK12 dangle the hope of success through AI math tutors. Google has even introduced a “co-scientist” who will collaborate with researchers to “generate novel hypotheses and research proposals.” With varying degrees of sophistication, these platforms offer the rewards of human relationships—without the humans.
If efficiency and scalability are the standard metrics by which we judge educational services and budgeting, it’s clear to see where we are headed. Why pay for tutoring and support staff for corequisite and developmental English students? Just get an institutional license for an LLM! Why pay for researchers to go to conferences to network and brainstorm? Get a “co-scientist” site license for the group. And why bother having professors keep office hours? Train AI avatars to answer student questions 24/7. Since much of the work of faculty and support staff can be off-loaded onto AI assistants, we can cut positions, reduce costs, and make education more accessible to all. If the AI startups and corporations can frame the dismantling of higher education as “restructuring” that aligns with democratic values, they will reap billions in profit.
I am not a Luddite; I use and celebrate technology. My amazing students this semester use technology to compose, revise, edit, collaborate, and communicate. I am staring at a screen as I type this, and I have assigned adaptive online learning practice for my students as they develop editing skills.
Still, I worry. My students deserve an instructor, not an algorithm that generates synthetic text. Granted, I don’t answer their emails at 2:00 AM, nor do I provide unlimited office hours for tutoring each week. I have the limitations common to all humans. But unlike the AI bots, I connect my students with writing fellows and writing tutors; those same tutors and I may show up for their band concerts, their sporting events, meals at the restaurants where they work, or services at the churches where they worship. The faculty and staff where I teach cheer for students at graduation and pose for pictures with them and their families; some of my students have come to my home, where we have shared a cup of coffee and worked on joint research.
My students deserve advisors who will talk to them about career choices and challenges—not AI-driven bots that get them registered quickly so that they will complete a curriculum “efficiently.” When they have questions about financial aid, they need our human financial aid counselors, not a chatbot.
Education is both a human and a relational endeavor—based on human need and entrusted to human collaboration. We cannot protect this very human responsibility by de-humanizing it. Fast integration of AI in instruction and academic support may indeed drive down costs and yield savings to the institution. But in the end, what exactly are we saving?
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
