Will excellent AI tutors make schools and human teachers unnecessary?
4 recorded positions from 3 people, first said May 17, 2023. They do not agree — the readings below are what each one actually argued.
Humans still needed for motivation coaching and explaining why something matters
Ethan Mollick · Jul 31, 2024
AI is an incredible one-on-one tutor, but even a perfect AI tutor does not substitute for teachers
People are not intrinsically self-motivated to learn and need extrinsic motivation; there is value in an instructor directing a class and in putting things into practice
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Severin Hacker · May 19, 2025
Even with excellent AI tutors, schools will still need humans to provide guidance, coaching, motivation and a sense of why something is worth learning
AI can help you learn a thing but will never tell you why the thing matters or should be learned
Scope: about the human element that remains in schooling
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Also on the record
Severin Hacker · May 19, 2025
Much of K-12 is childcare, so even a genuinely excellent AI tutor won't replace school — schools will still need humans
It's unlikely people will send kids to a school with no teachers or humans, just apps, and then go home; robots like Optimus won't fill that role
36:16 Schools persist because they provide childcare not just instruction
Emad Mostaque · May 17, 2023
School is still worth it, but its nature will change dramatically; schools should embrace AI and expect more of students rather than retreating to handwritten essays, because every child will have their own AI within a few years.
Banning the technology, as with schools reverting to handwritten essays, forgoes the chance to use it to let kids create and explore; universal personal AI will change schooling regardless.
52:27 Schools must adapt curricula to embrace ai rather than retreat to pre ai methods
Your assistant can query this graph directly — 4 positions here, 19,646 across the corpus. Add 996.fm over MCP.