The rise of AI and virtual learning could see a decline in professors in college classes

At a large private university in Northern California, a business professor uses an avatar to lecture on a virtual stage. Meanwhile, at a Southern university, graduate students in an artificial intelligence course discover that one of their nine teaching assistants is a virtual avatar, Jill Watson, also known as Watson, IBM's question-answering computer system. Of the 10,000 messages posted to an online message board in one semester, Jill participated in student conversations and responded to all inquiries with 97% accuracy. At a private college on the East Coast, students interact with an AI chat agent in a virtual restaurant set in China to learn the Mandarin language. These examples provide a glimpse into the future of teaching and learning in college.