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Why Are We Doing This to Ourselves? (The Faustian Appeal of AI)
May 15, 2025
On AI, Academia, and the Curious Case of the Suing Student
A college student is suing their professor for using ChatGPT to prepare lessons.
No, this isn’t an Onion headline.
Apparently, discovering that the course was designed with help from an artificial intelligence platform made the student feel “cheated.” They want their tuition refunded. After all, they enrolled for a human education, not a robo-lecture.
And thus, we arrive at the latest battle in the slow-motion implosion of academia: AI versus the Ivory Tower.
Let’s be clear: this lawsuit, however absurd on its face, is not just about tuition. It’s about trust, power, and the perceived authenticity of the educational experience. And at its core lies a question that should make every academic sweat through their elbow-patched tweed:
What, exactly, is a professor in the age of AI?
The Crisis Beneath the Complaint
We’ve been tiptoeing around this question for a while. First, it was MOOCs. Then Zoom classes. Now it’s ChatGPT.
Students are waking up to the uncomfortable reality that their professors are not fonts of divine wisdom but knowledge workers—sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes underpaid, and increasingly reliant on tools like AI to keep up.
That’s not inherently bad. But here’s the kicker: if a professor’s entire function is to deliver information, and AI can do that faster, cheaper, and 24/7… why pay $30,000 a year for the privilege of human PowerPoint slides?
Professorial Authority: A Relic or a Reinvention?
In a world where ChatGPT can summarize Nietzsche, write a decent lecture on restorative justice, and design a syllabus in seconds, the aura of the professor is under siege.
For years, the lecture hall has relied on a sort of theatrical suspension of disbelief:
“This person at the front knows things I don’t. They will pass their sacred knowledge onto me. I, in turn, will be changed.”
But now?
“This person sounds suspiciously like ChatGPT… and I’ve already read this on Reddit.”
The myth is cracking.
The New Archetype: Professor as Curator, Provocateur, and Guide
Let me be blunt: the professor who clings to traditional lecture formats and opaque grading rubrics is in existential danger. AI is gunning for your job—and frankly, it can do large parts of it better.
But here’s what AI can’t do:
- Sense the emotional subtext of a student’s silence.
- Reframe a philosophical paradox mid-conversation to fit a real-time insight.
- Share personal failures, ethical dilemmas, or uncomfortable truths.
- Light a fire in a student’s soul.
AI can answer. But it can’t question the way you do.
The future professor must evolve into a kind of academic shaman—half educator, half oracle—guiding students not just through knowledge but through meaning.
And yes, that means embracing AI. Not hiding it.
AI as Partner, Not Plagiarism
The real scandal isn’t that a professor used ChatGPT to design lessons. It’s that we haven’t already trained students to do the same.
The modern classroom should be a collaborative arena—professors and students alike engaging with AI as co-researchers, fact-checkers, and idea sculptors.
This isn’t cheating. It’s literacy in the 21st century.
If your plumber uses a laser level instead of eyeballing your pipes, do you demand your money back?
Of course not. You thank them for using the right tool.
Why should education be any different?
What Students Are Actually Paying For
Here’s the truth no university admissions brochure will admit:
Students aren’t paying for knowledge—they’re paying for transformation.
A good professor doesn’t just tell you what Foucault said. They challenge how you think about surveillance, identity, and freedom. They provoke you. They frustrate you. And—if you’re lucky—they inspire you.
If we do our jobs right, it shouldn’t matter how we prepared the lesson. What matters is what happened in the room.
So, Is the Professor Doomed?
Not at all.
But the role is mutating.
The age of the omniscient gatekeeper is over. We’re entering the age of the curator, the facilitator, the Socratic troublemaker.
Those professors who adapt—who become AI-literate, emotionally intelligent, and pedagogically creative—will not only survive, they’ll thrive.
Those who don’t?
Well… there’s always tenure. (Until the trustees catch on.)
A Final Note to Students
If you really want a refund, ask yourself this: was your professor uninspired because of AI, or were they already phoning it in long before it entered the classroom?
The machine isn’t the enemy.
Complacency is.
And in that sense, both students and professors would do well to wake up.