UW–Madison’s Shamya Karumbaiah, an assistant professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, was recently featured on Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week” in a segment titled, “Can AI Replace Teachers?” The program, which aired on Oct. 12, examined how artificial intelligence is being used in classrooms across the country to help teachers tailor instruction for individual students.
The story highlighted how AI can serve as a digital teaching assistant that tracks progress and provides real-time feedback. In the segment, Karumbaiah discussed 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 said. “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 pointed out the risks of building educational technologies that overlook real classroom conditions.
“Over 90% of innovation in AI for education fails,” she noted. “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.”
Karumbaiah said computer scientists can often make oversimplifying assumptions about students and classrooms when attempting to build AI tools for education. She also emphasized that AI should be designed to strengthen, not replace, the role of teachers.
“There’s something about human intent —there’s something about a human being caring about a child, about a student — which I don’t think AI is able to do,” she said.
Karumbaiah’s research focuses on human-centered AI for teaching and learning, with the goal of supporting teachers and augmenting human intelligence. Earlier this year, she received an internationally competitive award from the Society for Learning Analytics Research that will support her research on bias in artificial intelligence tools. She also recently launched a fellowship aimed at increasing educators’ skill in using artificial intelligence thoughtfully, ethically, and productively with their students.
Watch the full segment on Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week.”