Instructors after AI

How will the current wave of artificial intelligence change college teaching?

I’ve been thinking AI and education for years, and it’s all come into sharp focus lately, due to the advent of large language learning (LLM) bots like ChatGPT (previously). I’ve posed the question to academics and other people interested in higher education, and many answer by wondering what a post-AI instructor’s job looks like. One extreme view holds that AI is failing now and will collapse soon, so our task is to protect higher education from damage. Opposed to this is the fear that we might not need human instructors* at all, if these new technologies keep developing.

Today I’d like to chart a middle path and wonder what happens to the job of teaching in higher education if AI continues and improves. What happens if generative AI gets better — not artificial general intelligence level, but good enough to make content which large numbers of people value, somewhere between a calculator and a mad scientist’s assistant? What does an instructor do in a post-LLM world?

“University faculty after artificial intelligence,” visualized by Midjourney

Here’s the list I came up with in conversation with many people over the past month, from students to Patreon supporters, Facebook pals, friends in person and strangers online. It’s not in any particular order and there’s a lot of overlap between points.

1. Teaching prompt engineering (showing…