AI Has Already Killed Academia as We Know it
4th July 2026
If academia was a game, I’ve won it. Tenure, an endowed research chair, awards, leadership positions, an international journal I helped to found and now serve as the Editor-in-Chief, students I have supervised to their own successes, a good h-index, all the classic marks of success. This isn’t meant as bragging but rather to point out that while I’ve won this game, the game no longer makes sense.
Academia, as most of us have practiced it, runs on maximalism. The most grants, the most papers, the most students, the most awards, the most news coverage. While we are doing much better these days in highlighting impact and contributions, the underlying engine is still volume, and the volume has always been produced by independent human writing (applications, submissions, letters of support, reports, Conversation articles, press releases, etc., etc.). The problem is that AI makes volume essentially infinite (until the world burns up, but that’s a parallel discussion).