There are some who believe that AI will one day completely overshadow real human teachers, while others hold the view that this profession can never be overtaken by AI and that teachers will rather start using AI in their jobs. While both sides have valid arguments, I am more inclined towards the second opinion
A possible explanation for the first argument is that AI has the potential to suit each student’s individual needs. It is common for students to ask AI their questions rather than their teachers. That is because teachers might provide shallow answers due to lack of time, while AI agents can give more detailed responses to each student and reply to their seemingly silly questions. Therefore, it is possible that there will be no need for human teachers in the future, if AI can teach everything more precisely to every single student. For example, statistics show that with the emergence of ChatGPT, the number of students coming to office hours at universities has remarkably declined. Despite all of that, it is common for AI assisting tools to become extremely personalized and start providing misleading information. In fact, there is no AI tool that shares only verified and fact-checked information.
Therefore, the second opinion is more persuasive because teachers are responsible not only for sharing information but also for the personal development of students. Since the latter are just growing up, it is essential that they have real-life interactions with other students and teachers in order to improve their communication skills, their discipline and other cognitive skills. Since AI cannot monitor any of that in real life, teachers will remain responsible for such development at all times. However, teachers can facilitate their job by implementing AI at various stages of their work. During the time of COVID-19, for instance, students had to study online, and even though there were teachers who gave online classes regularly, lack of real-life engagement with them reduced students’ concentration, discipline and communication skills. Therefore, teachers will not be disregarded due to AI because they are responsible both for sharing knowledge and for nurturing other important aspects of their students.
To conclude, even though AI is good at becoming more personalized towards each student, I agree with the second side because, still, students require assistance in other dimensions of personal development, where AI simply cannot help.