Einstein's a go-go, but is AI a no-no?

UNDERSTAND, dear reader, that in 1974 I supported my primary school in resisting the introduction of the pocket calculator. If the abacus was good enough for the previous thousand generations, then it was good enough for us.

- Ron Beadle

By secondary school, whilst I and the other kids sat at the front worked our way through Pythagoras’ theorem, those at the back were using Casios and getting better marks. And that was the heart of the objection; the calculator was about cheating. But at least it wasn't marketed as a friend.

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague at another university posted gushingly about using an avatar that presented online lectures on their behalf. Students could barely tell the difference between human lectures and the avatar's, and the latter wouldn't get distracted, cough or sneeze. Every year its lectures could be updated at the margin and, as my colleague ages, the avatar never will.

I resisted the temptation to ask whether they'd ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray, but perhaps they'd answer: "Why bother?" After all, they could get a ten-line Al summary in a few seconds.