Nils Gilman, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute and former Associate Chancellor of UC Berkeley has penned this very thoughtful essay in Persuasion. in which he explores the pressure AI will place on the structure of the university. The main theme is that the University in the 20th century historically combined several functions: research generating new knowledge; credentialing; job training; incubating technical elites; and a coming of age experience. These functions were held together through mechanisms such as the lecture; the term paper; and the book. AI has now rendered these functions far more problematid as students can generate term papers at the drop of a hat. The essay’s best contribution is its dissection of things AI does not do well and how universities must adapt to do more of those. One punch line is that universities are likely to need more professors not fewer. It’s a long read for an on-line essay, but you shouldn’t miss it.