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Will AI replace a Professor?

AI risk 60/100Opportunity 90/100Future demand 75/100

How AI is affecting this role

  • A History professor uses Perplexity to find obscure primary sources across languages, cutting research time by 60%.
  • An Engineering professor builds a Python grading bot that tests student code automatically and gives feedback, handling 500 submissions in minutes.
  • A Professor uses Gamma.ai to turn a rough text outline into a fully formatted lecture deck with images, saving 4 hours of prep time per week.
  • Using a custom GPT trained on past exam papers, a professor generates 500 unique practice questions for a semester exam in minutes.

Ways to survive

  • Refuse to accept copy-pasted AI essays by switching to in-class oral vivas or handwritten analysis.
  • Focus on 'flipped classroom' models where class time is debate, not lecture.
  • Become an expert in the specific domain where AI hallucinates (e.g., recent post-colonial studies).

Ways to get ahead with AI

  • Create and sell specialized 'fine-tuned' AI models for your specific domain expertise.
  • Publish papers on the impact of AI in your specific field of study.
  • Automate the grant writing process to apply for double the funding opportunities.
  • Develop a personalized AI learning agent for each student to track their progress.

How ONROL helps

We teach you to build custom GPTs for your syllabus, automate research pipelines, and implement AI-driven assessment systems.

Talk to an ONROL counsellor

Get a personalised AI learning path for Professor.