Why have a human teacher? Epistemic co-responsibility and the classroom.

The advent of generative AI has called into question the need for human teachers in the future, with prominent figures such as Bill Gates predicting that AI tutors could supplant human teachers within the next decade. Whilst AI brings exciting opportunities in education, it will be argued that epistemic responsibility is core to teaching. Human teachers can act responsibly in terms of what they believe, what they teach, and how they help young people themselves to grow as responsible knowers, whereas generative AI is designed only to provide a reasonable continuation of what has gone before, prioritising plausibility over truth. 

View the presentation in full here:

Jarmy, C. (2025). Why have a human teacher? Epistemic co-responsibility and the classroom. AIEOU Inaugural Conference, University of Oxford. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17537983 

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