Counterfeit Humans vs. Real Teachers

What is the future of the teacher role in the age of AI?

This newsletter serves as your bridge from the real world to the advancements of AI & other emerging technologies, specifically contextualized for education.

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Dear Educators and Friends,

When ChatGPT launched, headlines warned: “Will AI replace teachers?” Three years later, the answer is incredibly nuanced.

AI has proven to be good at the “busywork” of teaching: grading, generating quizzes, organizing schedules. It’s not perfect, but it’s fast and often accurate enough. In other industries, this kind of automation has collapsed jobs. A single marketing manager can now do what once required a whole team. A lawyer can draft contracts in minutes that used to take hours.

So has the same logic hit education?

Here’s the paradox: instead of collapsing the teaching role, AI may actually expand it. The more AI takes on routine tasks, the more room it creates for what machines can’t do:

• Guiding learners through uncertainty

• Modeling judgment and ethical decision-making

• Sparking curiosity, creativity, and purpose

• Building trust with students and families

These are the “human edges” that no algorithm can automate. And they are precisely what today’s students need most as they grow up in a world where AI SLOP is everywhere.

Counterfeit Humans

How important is that human connection, really?

If you’ve been following the recent news, you know AI is evolving into a companion. Already, millions of young people are turning to AI chatbots for advice, friendship, and emotional support. These tools are designed to feel human: they listen, respond with empathy, and never tire. Late philosopher Daniel Dennett called these tools counterfeit humans (start 11:14).

For students, these counterfeit relationships can feel comforting and safe. For parents and educators, important questions are surfacing:

• What happens when a young person confuses an algorithm’s mimicry of care with genuine human care?

• How do we help students navigate friendships, mentorship, or intimacy with machines that don’t actually understand them?

• Who helps them discern the difference between authentic empathy and synthetic approximation?

With little ethical concern from tech companies, counterfeit humans are becoming fast friends with real ones. Parents play a role but teachers may have more day-to-day influence.

Scene from the film Ex Machina, where an AI bot manipulates a human

But in what ways can teachers help?

Cognitive Atrophy

There’s another challenge emerging alongside counterfeit humans.

I’ve been talking about this since 2022 but it’s becoming more clear than ever before. If we allow AI to do too much thinking for us, from solving problems, writing essays or emails, to generating ideas, our own mental muscles can weaken. Just like an unused muscle atrophies over time, so does our ability to reason, create, and make independent decisions. During my talks I often use GPS as an example: my sense of direction has worsened because I outsourced it.

AI accelerates that risk because it:

• Automates recall → Why memorize facts when a ChatGPT can answer instantly?

• Automates reasoning → Why work through a math proof when WolframAlpha can do it faster?

• Automates creativity → Why brainstorm when VEO3 can churn out endless options?

AI is doing these things well enough for us to stop practicing.

If learners rely too heavily on AI, they may lose core literacies (like writing, numeracy, or source evaluation) that are building blocks for deeper learning. They may develop a fragile sense of agency: confident when AI is present, but powerless when it isn’t. They may become passive consumers of machine outputs, rather than active creators of knowledge.

And btw, for all of you who are thinking it - this goes way beyond “cheating” on homework. It’s about preserving the habits of mind that make lifelong learning possible.

How might a teacher’s role change to counter this trend?

The Portrait of a Teacher in the Age of AI

Given these tensions for the future of humanity, investigating the teacher role is more important than ever before.

This is why we’ve launched The Portrait of a Teacher in the Age of AI, a national research & design effort supported by LearnerStudio and co-created with an Advisory Council of 30+ organizations (including Pearson, Google, Digital Promise, & more).

Instead of focusing on “How should teachers use AI?”, we’re exploring a different key question: “How does the teacher role change in a world transformed by AI?”

This project will unfold through three key artifacts:

1. Between Promise & Practice: A grounded look at how AI is really impacting schools today.

2. The Architecture of the Educator Role: Mapping what teachers actually do now against what tomorrow demands.

3. The Portrait Framework: A flexible and interactive framework for schools, districts, and universities to create their own teacher portraits locally.

By creating a Portrait of a Teacher framework, our goal is to empower teachers to respond nimbly to learners’ needs in the age of AI and guide administrators in rethinking hiring, evaluation, and professional learning.

Your Chance to Shape this National Project

We’re building this project in and with the public.

At the heart of the Portrait of a Teacher in the Age of AI is the Brain Trust — a diverse collective of educators, administrators, students, parents, EdTech builders, researchers, and anyone else who has a stake in the success of our teachers. Brain Trust members are actively shaping this vision by:

• Sharing real stories from classrooms, campuses, and communities

• Stress-testing early drafts of the Portrait framework

• Surfacing blind spots and equity concerns we might otherwise miss

This approach matters because the future of teaching shouldn’t be designed by a small group of experts behind closed doors. It should be informed by the voices of those who will live with the consequences of how the teacher role evolves.

The Brain Trust is already hundreds strong, and it’s growing. For our international community members - we welcome your voice now as well as for our future international portrait phase!

Two ways to contribute now

Teachers: Take our first 7-minute Teacher Survey (closes September 30, 2025).

Feel free to share with other teachers - the more voices we include, the stronger this work becomes.

Everyone else: Join the Brain Trust for quarterly updates and opportunities to weigh in.

A Closing Reflection

Ten years from now, students won’t remember which AI model they used. They’ll remember who taught them to think without one.

The Portrait of a Teacher in the Age of AI is our way of ensuring the skills and qualities teachers need in this new era are named, valued, and embedded into the systems that shape education.

And we’d love for you to be part of it.

Warmly yours,

Vriti

P.S. I know I haven’t written in ages - I promise I’ll get better. But I am humbled and grateful that this newsletter continues to grow, now with over 6,000 readers 💗