UW–Madison’s Shamya Karumbaiah, an assistant professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, was featured on Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week” in a segment titled, “Can AI Replace Teachers?” The program, which aired on Oct. 12, examines how artificial intelligence is being used in classrooms across the country to help teachers tailor instruction for individual students.
The story highlights how AI can serve as a digital teaching assistant that tracks progress and provides real-time feedback. Karumbaiah discusses both the potential and the challenges of integrating AI into education. “We know that a teacher in the front of the classroom and students in front of their laptops is not a model that works — it’s broken,” she says. “The last couple of years, especially, have been very exciting. I would say the big change is the ability for teachers to customize what’s happening with AI.”
Karumbaiah also points out the risks of building educational technologies that overlook real classroom conditions. “Over 90 percent of innovation in AI for education fails,” she notes. “If you haven’t even thought about, fundamentally, how are you going to improve education, and you’re only coming from the point of view of, ‘We have this AI tool and we’re going to find something to apply to,’ it’s not going to work.
“It’s yet another fancy tool,” she adds, but the underlying problems still remain.
Karumbaiah emphasizes that AI should be designed to strengthen, not replace, the role of teachers. “It allows teachers to do what they do best,” she says. “When you think of your favorite teacher, you don’t think of, you know, the teacher who taught derivatives the best. You think of the teacher who encouraged you, who made you feel smart, who made you feel capable — who made you feel like you could learn anything and accomplish anything.”
Karumbaiah’s research focuses on human-centered AI for teaching and learning, with the goal of supporting teachers and augmenting human intelligence.
Watch the full segment on Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week.”