Who Needs a Professor?
Questioning my very existence in an age of AI
📡 On my Radar
I make some of my students deliver their exams orally. Not as punishment, but to discourage them from using AI to cheat.
They can use AI to prepare however they want. But when they sit across from me, they have to actually know the material, without AI’s help. It’s the best balance I’ve found. But it’s my balance. A computer science professor can’t exactly ask students to verbally compile code.
If we can ask AI any question and get an 80-90% good enough answer, why exactly do we need teachers? Experts?
Increasingly, a lecture is just a slow query with bad lighting.
Most school systems value grades more than students value learning.
This is why students cheat.
When both teachers and students are using AI, the old model … professor as knowledge delivery system … is dead. And honestly? Good riddance.
Because knowledge has been democratized. A first-gen student in Compton can now access something resembling an elite college tutor. Customized, patient, available at any time. That’s extraordinary. That’s the equalizer we’ve been asking for.
But here’s what AI can’t do: it can’t tell a student their argument is interesting but wrong in a way that makes them rethink everything. It can’t model what it looks like to change your mind in real time. It can’t mentor.
So what’s a teacher for now? I’m still thinking about my answer but I’d be curious to hear yours.
📈 By the Numbers
👊🏽 Make a Difference
11 jobs | 1 internship | 1 funding opportunity
INTERNSHIP | Amica Center for Immigrant Rights seeks law student interns to work with children in the immigration system this summer.
JOB | Grande Lum is hiring an Associate Director of the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School.