AI won’t replace teachers. It will redefine them

Just a few years ago, students turned to teachers whenever they needed an explanation. Today, many ask ChatGPT first, often comparing textbook explanations with AI-generated ones. 

According to the Higher Education Policy Institute's 2025 Student Generative-AI Survey of 1,041 UK undergraduate students, 92% reported using generative AI, up from 66% just a year earlier. Fascinating or alarming? Perhaps both.

Students aren't the only ones turning towards generative AI. Teachers, too, are rapidly integrating AI into lesson planning, assessment design, research, presentation and routine administrative work. Educators across the world are using AI for lesson planning, simplifying difficult concepts, creating lecture notes and preparing presentations. 

The UK's National Literacy Trust reported in its 2025 survey of 2,908 teachers that 58% of them were already using generative AI in teaching. Among them, 58.7% used it to create lesson resources, whereas 46.4% used it to create quizzes or comprehension tests. The frequency of AI use is also interesting. 

A 2025 Gallup–Walton Family Foundation study surveyed 2,232 US public K–12 teachers and found that 60% had used AI tools for their work during the 2024–25 school year; of them, 32% used AI at least weekly.

Such swift adoption shows that AI is not only a means of composing emails or giving simple answers anymore. Another area being transformed through the emergence of AI is classrooms, which have become an essential aspect of contemporary teaching practices. AI changes not only the way teachers teach and students learn but, what is probably most important, their interaction.

Through the use of AI tools, teaching materials, accessible examples, and practice exercises could be generated very quickly, instead of spending many hours developing them. As students increasingly start to rely on AI, there is a need for teachers to reconsider how to test their knowledge, creativity, and effort.

Thus, AI is increasingly being employed in creating marking rubrics, generating personalised feedback, and even detecting potential plagiarism cases. As per the National Literacy Trust survey, 46.4% of teachers stated that they used generative AI to develop quizzes and tests. AI saves considerable amounts of time needed to prepare testing materials.

Moreover, AI is becoming a research assistant for both teachers and scholars. It must be noted that though it cannot replace critical analysis or scholarly reasoning, AI will give teachers more time for analysis and scientific investigation, as they do not have to engage in information processing. 

The potential of AI extends beyond mere editing and proofreading. Now it can help scholars investigate unknown subjects, find related literature, summarise scientific works, compare research results and generate novel ideas for further research.

Much of a teacher's workload extends beyond teaching itself, with administrative responsibilities consuming a significant portion of the day despite requiring relatively little pedagogical expertise. 

AI is increasingly being used to automate routine tasks such as drafting emails, preparing meeting minutes, writing reports, creating announcements, and organising administrative documents. 

By reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks, AI allows teachers to devote more of their time and energy to what matters most: teaching, mentoring, and supporting students.

For centuries, teachers were the primary source of knowledge, delivering lectures, explaining concepts, and answering students' questions while students relied on them and textbooks for information. Today, however, this century-old classroom model is changing. Students now consult AI tools for personalised explanations.

Another challenge that has emerged because of the increased amount of information available online is whether people learn or just get better at finding answers. The main issue here is that now, instead of asking the question "can you find the answer", we have to ask the question "can you think critically about the answer you found".

In order to illustrate this idea, let me offer an analogy. An architect does not build a skyscraper using their hands. An architect designs the skyscraper, coordinates the specialists, and makes sure that the final product meets all the required standards. Teachers are evolving to be learning architects. They design the experience of learning, help students to solve complex problems, collaborate and analyse the quality of the information generated by the AI.

In an era when uniquely human abilities like inspiration, fostering creativity and cultivating critical judgment become the main responsibility of teachers, teaching transforms from teaching people information to teaching them to think, question and learn.

The emerging relations between teachers, students, and AI provide more learning opportunities. At the same time, this new paradigm brings up the issues of trust, originality and integrity in the educational process, which educators are only starting to deal with.

There are several challenges associated with the use of AI in the classroom. One of the biggest of them is the overreliance on artificial intelligence. If students take the information generated by AI for granted, without verification, they run a risk of turning understanding into convenience. The same goes for teachers. As much as students should check the information generated by AI, so should teachers.

Academic integrity becomes another important challenge. Nowadays, AI is used by students at various stages of the learning process, from assignments to writing essays. This makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the work done independently and the one done using AI. Instead of fighting with AI, many educators decide that the tests should be redesigned to evaluate the level of critical thinking, originality and problem-solving skills.

Finally, there are the issues of trust, reliability and safety. AI is not perfect and can make mistakes. It can provide unreliable and incorrect information, hallucinate, invent sources and generate biased answers while being confident in its statements. Therefore, both students and teachers need to understand that AI is their assistant and not the unquestionable source of truth and learn the skill of checking the information against reliable sources.

The solution to the challenges mentioned above is the integration of AI into teaching in a responsible way. Instead of instructing students to use AI, we must teach them how to prompt safely, fact-check, recognise social biases, and understand its limitations. 

Assessment methods, including examinations, project work, presentations, and creative writing, should be redesigned to acknowledge AI while continuing to evaluate students' understanding, originality, and critical thinking. Several leading universities, including Harvard, now encourage assignments in which students critically evaluate or improve AI-generated outputs rather than pretending AI does not exist. 

For example, an assignment can be designed in this way, "Use ChatGPT and analyse the SWOT and PESTLE of the business. Provide recommendations." This will test how students can generate better output compared to each other. 

Marking will be done based on better output generation. This way, AI is used in an informed manner, yet students will also use critical thinking so that they can get better results compared to their peers to get higher marks. 

Additionally, take-home assessments must be replaced with in-person assessments, oral defences, debates etc., where students are allowed to use AI to prepare, but they won't blindly depend on AI. Students can also be asked to make a part in their reports called "AI disclosure" where they honestly write the use/prompts utilised to study or prepare submitted reports.

Teachers alone cannot drive this transformation. Universities and schools must develop clear policies that define how AI can be used in learning and assessment while preserving academic integrity. Equally important is investing in AI literacy for training educators so they can confidently integrate AI into teaching, redesign assessments, and guide students in responsible use. 

Reliable AI must be introduced, which means an artificial intelligence system that consistently produces accurate, safe, and predictable results over time, even in unexpected situations. 

The goal is not AI-free education, but an education that helps students think critically, act responsibly, and use AI as a tool rather than a substitute for learning.

AI is not replacing teachers; it is redefining the teaching profession. As routine tasks become increasingly automated, educators have more opportunities to focus on what technology cannot replace: inspiring curiosity, nurturing creativity, mentoring students, and developing critical thinkers.

The future of education will not be determined by how much AI is used in the classroom, but by how wisely teachers integrate it into learning. In the AI era, the role of the teacher is evolving, not from expert to obsolete, but from knowledge provider to learning architect.

Noshin Anjum Chaiti is a Lecturer at Brac Business School, BRAC University.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.