Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the University

The universities have been under assault from the Left for decades, but now advanced A. I. has its destructive role to play.

A recent article by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, widely circulated among academics, reported that “just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT [in 2022], a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments”. The use of Generative-AI chatbots for required coursework is, if anything, even more widespread today. At elite universities, community colleges, and everything in between, students are using AI to take notes in class, produce practice tests, write essays, analyze data, and compose computer code, among other things. A freshman seems to speak for entire cohorts of undergraduates when she admits that “we rely on it, [and] we can’t really imagine being without it”. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes multiple students who are effectively addicted to the technology, and are distressed at being unable to kick the habit — because, as an NYU senior confesses, “I know I am learning NOTHING.”

Related: Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

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Bill Vallicella

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6 responses to “Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the University”

  1. Dominik Avatar
    Dominik

    I can’t speak about the American situation, only as an outsider. I myself due to certain preconditions in the army have been forced to pursue a masters degree in a completely unrelated field (economy in my case). I have no usage for these achievements in my line of work, especially since by the end of my career I’ll be 10 years removed from my graduation. Nor do I care for the topics that were studied.
    The point of my little biography here is just to say that from my perspective higher education in its current form is purely a means to an end to get a job. But if that’s the only point, particularly given the outrageous fees, it’s really not surprising at all, that students should use every trick in the book to achieve that desired certificate; nothing else will get you to your goal. Idealism is an expensive luxury only few can afford. If I were ever to pursue a philosophy degree, then out of pure interest and because the subject matter is important. Nobody would let a computer summarize Plato, if the education itself was the goal. But let’s say an article on the tendency of fuel prices during COVID? Or the assignment of writing a paper in electrical engineering? If higher education is merely a means to an end for something beyond itself, then it’s natural for it to be instrumentalizes.
    Of course there’s still room for higher education, but not in its current form. No tear needs to be shed for its death though.
    You yourself have indicated how unfulfilling teaching was in the 80s already. I can only imagine how many orders of magnitude more frustrating it would have to be, if you were to teach in the current environment.

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Thanks for the comments, Dominik.
    >>higher education in its current form is purely a means to an end to get a job.<< Yes, that is what it is for almost everyone, which is why so-called 'higher education' has little or nothing to do with education classically understood. Of course, there is nothing wrong with getting a job, making money, 'getting ahead,' achieving a certain social status. But almost no one nowadays wants to become educated in the classical sense. The idealism of me and many of my generation is dead. And so are the humanities. I love philosophy but I hated teaching it: in an intro class of 35, I'd be lucky to have five who were worth teaching. I abandoned a tenured position in 1991. I can't imagine teaching now. I had the impression that you have an undergraduate philosophy degree. Or did you study philosophy on your own? Philosophy is for the few. It can never become a mass consumption item. What most people need is job training. The main threat of advanced AI and robotics is that it will eliminate most jobs, blue collar and white collar.

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  3. Tony Benvin Avatar
    Tony Benvin

    Dr. V,
    I, too abandoned my tenured position (art and architectural history) after twelve years. Although I miss the teaching, especially my upper level courses, I could never return to it as a career.
    I recommend the following article as a follow up to your comments on the death of the university. Lengthy, but, IMHO, quite worth the read by a John Carter (pseudonym?)
    Tony Benvin
    The link (Hat Tip Glenn Reynolds,Instapundit, posted 06/11/25 @ 8:00am)
    https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-class-of-2026?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=841240&post_id=165643043&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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  4. Dominik Avatar
    Dominik

    Thank you for the kind words, Bill.
    I’ve been self-educated for seven years now. The advantage is that it allows me to focus on my areas of interest.
    For example, I share the concerns about AI, but in a different field. A good friend of mine is an artist and one of the few that is aware of the philosophical issues raised about AI art, when “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. So I’m currently studying Dietrich von Hildebrand’s two volume work on Aesthetics, in order to philosophically understand objective criteria that distinguishes human art from a machine output. I don’t think academia grants me the time to try to answer the question “What is art?” And yet I can’t shake the feeling that we’re loosing a significant part of our humanity if we ever were to outsource our artistic endeavours to a computer.
    I still have a naive idealism about the academy, even if it may never come to fruition on the large scale again. The best we can do is finding like-minded friends and acquaintances that are able to ponder these questions as well. Because, by my lights, to dismiss their importance is just to express that the topic has not been understood. The problem is that I don’t think you’ll find these people in a philosophy department. At least not in the universities that I’ve witnessed.

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  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Tony,
    Thanks for the link. Long, but good. The bit about leisure caught my eye, and reminded me of a failed attempt, years ago, to convey this classical notion, well-explained by Josef Pieper in Leisure: The Basis of Culture to some warm bodies.
    I would be interested in hearing your story, if you care to share it, either here, or by ‘private’ e-mail. It takes courage to toss aside a tenured position, given how difficult they are to attain; why, in your case, did you do so?
    I find endlessly fascinating the various ways people negotiate this strange world. That is why I am interested in your story.
    Thanks for stopping by. I see from my e-mail records that we have been in touch, off and on, since 2014.
    There is a definite upside to this advanced technology. Blogging, and the internet generally, have enriched my life immeasurably, mainly by attracting like-minded people. It is driving young people crazy, but we are immune to the perils, having come to it in our maturity.
    What’s frustrating, though, are the really old people whom I would like to be in contact with and who want to be in contact with me, who simply cannot figure out how to use e-mail, access blogs, do searches, etc.

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  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    Were you raised Catholic? How did you come upon Dietrich von Hildebrand? I have read a number of his works, though not his two volumes on aesthetics.
    Take a look at the essay Benvin recommends.

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