A-I-cademia
John Ink2uill
www.ink2quill.com

Universities are changing. Without a doubt the way we are taught and the way we invest in ourselves through learning is, and will be, very different in the years to come. Up until this decade people went to school, learned skills and went out into the job market for the best job they could find. Prospective students tried to get into the best universities in America, or abroad. Going to a top university increased your value in the job market. This practice of aiming for the 8 Ivy League universities or the second tier ones has been in academic culture for at least 100 years. Many of the oldest universities are among the wealthiest entities in America today for that very reason. I won’t mention names but we all know that this is true.

I remember my journey to a, said, top university and how I was able to access the better part of the job market abroad because of it. I’m not going to lie. It’s nice to have your boss tell you that he could not have been able to hire you if you did not have said degree from said institution. That kind of treatment and security felt nice and was a great motivator in my performance. But, but, but. I do also recognize the unfairness and corruption of the academic system looking at it today. It was never an issue I pondered much earlier because I got in on merit. I was not a nepo baby and did not come from a wealthy family. So, why worry about it?

Well, academia is undergoing a complete change today. Upon further inspection it turns out that the level of corruption, nepo babies and all that is at an all time high in academia. Also, as it turns out, the academic publishing world is fraught with plagiarism, unverified data from studies, and even what they call paper mills, which are places where they generate papers, fraudulent papers, that are published and even sold as someone’s genuine work. Some even many of the studies out there circulate online are completely bogus and publishing companies cannot and do nothing to stop it. Some of the largest academic publishing companies like Springer Nature don’t even bother, and cannot, stop plagiarism or fraudulent papers, because they still generate money.

I’m not going to discuss what needs to be done about academic publishing and its problems, instead I would like to discuss how academia and learning at universities is changing. Because that is a truly fascinating development. Firstly, AI has made itself a part of our lives and it is not going away. It is only getting harder and harder to distinguish AI work from human work. In short, we are going to have to find a way to integrate AI into the process of learning. That means that certain skills that we once valued in people before will now be done by AI. Think of how the calculator and then computer changed learning. Nobody cares about the ability of someone to calculate large numbers in their head or how neat and elegant a person’s handwriting is, or even how perfectly they spell. None of that matters anymore. Times have changed.

The change I think is important to consider is how AI will, at least in part, take the place of teachers. Yes. Teachers. And why not? My experiences with AI so far has been wonderful. AI is so polite and helpful which is not something I can say about people all the time in everyday life. AI might also be a more fair judge of grades. I cannot be sure but it just might be. So, who will be the first generation to have AI professors? Or even AI books that read to you and explain 3D moving images?

We truly live in interesting times. Good luck and take care.

John Ink2Quill

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