Exploring the Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence in Shaping Future Academia
AI is predicted – or at least speculated – to transform nearly every aspect of our lives over the coming decades, including what it means to be an academic and the culture and roles of academia in society. This report speculatively situates itself in the year 2100 and considers the potential AI-driven trajectories that led to the imagined academic culture of the time. In doing so it considers three divergent scenarios: Augmented Partner, AGI Supersession, and Controlled Plateau.
The ideas developed are augmented by five annexes which explore:
- A hypothetical narrative scenario spanning 2025 – 2100 (Annex I);
- The potential nature and role of the “artisanal intellectual” in 2100 (Annex II);
- A speculative future scenario where AI “scholars” synergistically combine distributed and embedded artificial intelligence (Annex III);
- The hypothetical societal value of academia in 2100 (Annex IV); and
- A “minority report” which considers an alternative speculative future to those explored in Annexes I – IV (Annex V).
This report was conceived, outlined, and finalized by Andrew Maynard while using OpenAI’s Deep Research (model o3) to generate and refine an initial draft. AI-generated content may contain errors, omissions, or outdated information. Readers are encouraged to independently verify all critical facts before relying on this material
April 28, 2025