Category: PURE BLOG

In a thread elsewhere, someone assumed that I was concerned about the possibility of AI replacing university tutors.

I don’t have concerns about AI. It is changing the way we work. It has massively improved my efficiency in the last few years, initially in relatively mundane ways, then in more sophisticated ones. Now, it is a tool that I gladly engage with because it is making a vast difference to my productivity.

It is already ‘denting’ my professions, and I am confident that it will soon make many of the charlatans redundant. This is ultimately going to be good for the professions. Meanwhile, there are tools that I have not been able to make the most of, which other applications are creating space to embrace, and that is something I look forward to.

I recently had a tour of the department in Bristol where I was an undergraduate. When I was there we numbered about 40 students usually with one lecturer and one demonstrator for our laboratory sessions. Today they teach 120. Before a student is allowed into the lab each week, they sit an AI-generated multiple choice formative assessment based on pre-class reading. I have absolutely no doubt that the graduates know their subject and have skills that are far better than the rudimentary ones that most of my generation acquired.

I said that I don’t have concerns. That’s not quite true. Firstly, there are areas where I would like to see AI being applied more immediately (international diplomacy being an example). Secondly, rather selfishly, I hope that I shall continue to be able to embrace and benefit from AI (and its successors) until the day I die.

The term often used to describe the commitment of universities to continue teaching less popular subjects, for the sake of maintaining academic rigour and integrity, is “academic stewardship.” This concept embodies the responsibility of higher education institutions to preserve and transmit knowledge across all fields of study, irrespective of their current popularity or direct utility in the job market. Academic stewardship recognises the intrinsic value of all disciplines in contributing to a well-rounded, comprehensive education and the advancement of society as a whole.

This approach advocates for a broad and diverse curriculum that upholds the importance of all academic disciplines. It supports the idea that universities should not solely focus on subjects with high student demand or clear career pathways but should also protect less popular or more specialised fields of study. The underlying belief is that every field of knowledge, whether in the arts, humanities, or certain pure sciences, plays a crucial role in fostering critical thinking, cultural awareness, and intellectual diversity.

Academic stewardship is crucial for ensuring that expertise in narrower or less commercially driven subjects remains available to educate future generations and contribute to the body of global knowledge. It also reflects a commitment to intellectual diversity, acknowledging that today’s less popular subjects might become tomorrow’s essential disciplines.

[Written and illustrated with the help of ChatGPT 4 and Dall-e 2.]