AI’s Impact on Academic Authority: A Call for Reflection
In today’s academic landscape, department chairs find themselves faced with the daunting task of drafting strategic plans, tenure evaluations, or grant proposals. Sitting in front of a glowing screen, exhaustion takes hold—not of the body, but of the mind. After pausing to gather thoughts, many opt to employ generative AI tools, pasting in a few bullet points and requesting a draft that aligns with their institution’s core values and strategic objectives.
A few moments later, a polished text appears on the screen. The chair makes minor edits before submitting it, feeling a sense of accomplishment. Yet, in this pursuit of efficiency, something fundamental is lost.
Shifting Concerns in Higher Education
Current discussions surrounding artificial intelligence in higher education predominantly focus on students. Faculty express concerns that these tools might enable undergraduates to sidestep the learning process, producing essays devoid of true understanding. While these apprehensions are valid, they overlook a more significant change happening within academic institutions. The more pressing issue is that faculty and administrators are increasingly relying on a form of synthetic authority that maintains institutional power while undermining the intellectual rigor that once justified it.
The Erosion of Academic Expertise
Traditionally, academic expertise was characterized by uncertainty and risk. As sociologist Andrew Abbott notes, professions established their authority by asserting jurisdiction over areas of uncertain knowledge. Being an expert involved exercising judgment in conditions fraught with ambiguity. Academic authority depended on the willingness to stake one’s reputation on a specific claim or interpretation—be it a controversial thesis, an unpopular finding, or a tenure decision.
This crucial connection between authority and epistemic risk is now diminishing. In contemporary universities, authority is progressively shifting from individual scholars to the infrastructural systems governing academic life. Metrics, rankings, assessment protocols, and compliance requirements are increasingly defining what constitutes legitimate knowledge and acceptable performance. Generative AI amplifies this trend by producing fluent outputs that satisfy institutional requirements, often without necessitating substantive engagement.
The Role of Synthetic Fluency
When faculty utilize AI tools to create syllabi, summarize literature, or draft administrative documents, they are not merely saving time. They are engaging in a system of synthetic fluency, generating outputs that align with procedural expectations for coherence and tone. Although these documents may appear authoritative, their legitimacy stems from stylistic conformity rather than substantive depth. As a result, experts become conduits through which institutional legitimacy flows, rather than originators of that legitimacy.
The Audit Society
This shift is intertwined with what Michael Power famously termed the “audit society.” In audit-centric systems, organizations prioritize evidence that proper processes have been followed over the substantive quality of those outcomes. Validity is replaced by compliance. What matters is not the depth of understanding, but demonstrable adherence to guidelines.
AI is particularly adept at thriving in this environment, producing clear documents that meet formal requirements. Universities now contend with a paradox of plausibility: their documents are more polished, their policies more comprehensive, and their visions more internally consistent than ever before, yet the overall clarity of the institution’s epistemic foundation is diminishing.
The Changing Nature of Grant Applications
Take, for instance, the modern grant application. Historically, it served as a platform to advance unique hypotheses; today, it increasingly functions as a test of one’s ability to meet specific stylistic and conceptual constraints set by funding bodies. Success is often determined by how well a proposal aligns with predefined categories and keywords rather than its originality. AI tools facilitate this alignment with remarkable efficacy, shifting authority toward those who are adept at navigating these complex systems instead of those who genuinely deepen their understanding.
Personal Consequences of Synthetic Authority
The implications of this transformation extend beyond institutional boundaries; they are profoundly personal. Faculty members are experiencing unprecedented levels of burnout, cynicism, and disengagement. These issues cannot be attributed solely to increased workloads or administrative overload; they encompass moral and epistemic dimensions.
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han characterizes the modern individual as an “achievement-subject,” driven by the need for constant self-optimization. In academia, this pressure manifests as an ongoing demand to be productive, visible, and impactful. When faculty meet these demands through synthetic fluency—permitting algorithms to streamline their prose and structure their thoughts—a subtle estrangement arises. They continue to perform authority without fully embodying it.
The Disconnect Between Authority and Responsibility
A professor relying on AI-generated lesson plans may feel disconnected from their classroom. An administrator who delegates policy drafting to AI might sense a detachment from governance. While titles and publications remain intact, the lived experience of judgment and responsibility diminishes. Authority persists on the surface, but its depth erodes.
A Call to Reclaim Authenticity in Academia
To ensure the academic profession continues as more than a mere interface for algorithmic systems, it must confront these changes head-on. Simply policing student plagiarism will not resolve the deeper issues at hand. The real challenge is examining our own practices and incentives.
Synthetic authority is alluring as it promises efficiency, providing relief from administrative burdens. However, the very friction it eliminates was often where genuine critical thinking occurred. The challenges of articulating complex arguments, making defensible yet contestable judgments, and the required deliberation in writing are integral to the essence of expertise.
Valuing Friction in Academic Practices
Resisting the erosion of academic authority necessitates a renewed commitment to friction. Universities must defend spaces where inefficiency is not perceived as a failure, but rather as a vital condition for informed judgment. This involves questioning metrics that demand constant output, valuing intellectual risk over procedural smoothness, and tolerating forms of work that do not lend themselves easily to audit.
The Future of Academic Authority
The real danger is not that artificial intelligence will replace professors. Rather, the risk lies in its potential to enable universities to operate without anyone genuinely understanding, judging, or taking responsibility. Authority has become increasingly synthetic; now is the time for faculty to decide whether they wish to merely serve as conduits of this authority or to reclaim the challenging yet rewarding work of genuinely being experts.
Åke Elden is a behavioral scientist and research adviser at NLA University College in Norway, holding a Ph.D. in psychology and a diverse background in technology management and clinical research. His research explores how digital and algorithmic systems reshape human behavior and meaning, drawing from mimetic theory and broader inquiries into cultural and ontological change.
