From Guru-Shishya to AI Agents: Will AI Replace Teachers?

Dear Friends,

I am a 5th-generation teacher in my family. My great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, and grandfather followed the Guru-Shishya Parampara way of teaching. It was an oral tradition, and the teacher was the sole authority. The thought was that books would destroy memory. However, both my parents were school teachers. By then, books had become the authority. The teacher’s role was to transmit knowledge from books.

When I joined teaching in 2010, MOOCs were starting to pick up. The role of teachers had shifted toward mentoring and inspiring students in the classroom. During the pandemic, I recorded my Design Thinking classes at home for the first time and shared them with students. In 2022, one of my friends started a startup to develop an AI Avatar (skill2030.com) to replace an English teacher. Last year, I taught AI for Business and helped all our MBA students develop one or another AI Agent. In spite of this, as of 2024, 269 million students are enrolled worldwide. Universities survived in 2026 as well.

You might be wondering why I am talking about this journey. Today, I have to deliver a webinar on how careers are going to change, especially for MBA students, in the context of AI disruption. The moot question I need to answer is whether university enrolment will decline, increase, or remain stagnant. This is a hard question. However, teaching patterns and methodologies will change drastically.

1000 AD–1450: Gurus and Monasteries focus

1450–1900: Printing Press focus

1900–1980: Radio, Film, and Television focus

1980–2000: Computer, CD, and Multimedia era

2000–2010: Internet era

2010–2020: MOOCs era

2020–2023: Remote classes during COVID

2023–2026: GenAI era

2026 onwards: Personal AI Tutor / Agentic Era

Every time, the same question popped up: "Is the teacher still relevant?"

In the last 1,000 years, teachers survived every disruption. However, there is a catch. The teachers who changed and transformed during each of these phases survived.

What is the one skill required for a teacher across all these phases?

The mindset to adapt.

I recently read a small case. Two neighbours were fighting over apples supposedly damaging tulips. Law students produced pages of legal arguments. The professor ended the discussion with one observation:

"Apples fall in autumn. Tulips bloom in spring."

The case itself did not make sense.

In the age of AI, judgment matters more than information.

Hence, in my view, we as teachers need to bring that judgment into the classroom. We need to teach human-centeredness, empathy, design thinking, and commensurability rather than merely bringing theories and research into the classroom.

More than producing research papers, teachers have to spend time building simple, inspiring stories and short cases and bringing them to the table for discussion. Today, a good AI agent like Jenni.ai can produce a better research paper than a human teacher spending hours and hours writing one. The teacher's role now is to read such AI-produced information and turn it into meaningful capsules for classroom consumption.

I am seriously considering changing my teaching methodology in this direction rather than spending most of my time on in-depth research and other activities. This, in my view, will be the biggest help to students in the age of AI.

The Mindset That Kept Teachers Relevant for 1,000 Years

Ravi Saripalle

40 Years to Malgudi Days: Still Relevant in the Age of Reels :From Debugging Antennas to Debugging Life

Dear Friends,

We bought a TV in 1986! I remember it was a Dynora TV. It was a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) television with a wooden or dark plastic cabinet. It had manual channel tuning knobs and a rooftop antenna connection. It had to be pointed toward the nearest Doordarshan transmission tower. TV signals traveled through the air and were captured by the antenna. When strong winds came, the picture became blurry, or "snow" appeared on the screen. Two people used to operate it. One changed the direction, and the other, at home, shouted about the picture quality!! In IT language, it is called debugging and testing!!

Today, we have transitioned to Cable TV, DTH (Dish TV, Tata Play, Airtel), and Internet streaming (YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar). In those days, the total number of National Hindi serials was around 10–20. A typical household probably knew 80–90% of them. Today, across the world, there are approximately 5,000–10,000 TV serials and 3,000–5,000 OTT originals. The total number of active shows today is around 10,000–15,000. If you include library content, the total would be 100,000–300,000 serials/shows/series available for streaming globally.

Today, I don't think any family member discusses any serial because viewership is completely fragmented. We moved from content scarcity to content abundance, and now the new scarcity is attention.

In those days, the prominent programs were News, Krishi Darshan, Chitrahaar, Hum Log (started in 1984), Sunday movies, and regional programming. However, I still remember a serial named Malgudi Days. Malgudi Days (1986) is one of India's most beloved television series, based on the works of R. K. Narayan and directed primarily by Shankar Nag.

I asked GPT a simple question—what was the title song, to test GPT's performance!! It gave the right answer: Tan-na-na-na... tan-na-na-na...

Why did I get captivated by Malgudi Days? Malgudi Days teaches empathy, observation, moral reasoning, and cultural roots without sounding preachy. Malgudi is a fictional small town. The episode I remember was The Missing Mail/Maa Aur Beta. A mother keeps waiting for her son at the railway station. I don't remember whether the son comes back or not—mostly not. Trains come and go. Passengers come and go. But a mother's hope remains.

Where are such programs today? Where is the time to share such emotions? The other day, I was traveling in a local bus. Two children were simply playing video games and fighting virtually while sitting side by side. The parents were watching their own reels!

"Taarangam Tales" (@taarangam.tales) recently launched Emotions of Ranga, a book that presents various emotions, their importance, and what is good and what is wrong. We need such books now because they are missing from our lives.

Malgudi Days was written by R. K. Narayan in 1943 as a short story collection. Shankar Nag, the director of this serial, lived a short life (35 years), but he became a true legend in Karnataka. Shankar Nag was not just a filmmaker; he was a visionary urban planner and social reformer. In 1989, he invested his own money and conceptualized the Bengaluru Metro blueprint, envisioning a modern public transport system decades before its actual implementation. His brother, Anant Nag, who acted in Malgudi Days, is active in public life.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (R. K. Narayan), the author of Malgudi Days, and his youngest brother, the famous Indian cartoonist and illustrator R. K. Laxman, are true legends who influenced many families across India.

Do you have any nostalgic moments with Malgudi?

Ravi Saripalle

Layoffs, Mangoes, and the Meaning of Life

Dear Friends,

A couple of days back, I read a LinkedIn post that said: “CTC of ₹80 lakhs. A house in the US. A successful career. And yet, a man died by suicide after losing his job. Recently, a young couple in Bengaluru reportedly died by suicide after the husband was laid off. He had earlier lost a job in the US, rebuilt his career in India, and then faced another layoff in India.”

At the same time, I also read an interesting post about Deba Padhyami from Tamasa village in Malkangiri district, Odisha, who has successfully grown the famous Japanese Miyazaki mango. This fruit is so rare and valuable that premium-quality mangoes have reportedly sold for nearly ₹3 lakh per kilogram in international markets. However, Deba is now facing a completely different problem because he has no idea how to sell them in international markets. He has been spending sleepless nights guarding the tree. Buyers are usually HNIs, luxury fruit stores, premium hotels, and high-end restaurants.

Layoffs are definitely stressful. In my first job after campus, I worked for nine months at a company and tasted what a layoff feels like. Dreams get shattered. We become low and insecure. We get drained. We undersell ourselves in every situation. Even if you are highly talented, a lack of confidence leads you to make multiple mistakes.

Then I realized that when you are at a highly comfortable stage and at the peak of your career, you should quit your job, rank, and earnings and start fresh. It does not mean shifting between multiple companies for a higher package. That is another insecurity process.

In my view, ten years is a decent period to prove yourself in any organization. After that, if you are doing well in that organization, we should move on and start from scratch, as if we were freshers again, in terms of experience, learning, and skills. I attempted two different transitions with different skill requirements. They partly worked and partly failed.

Now I have crossed 50! I do not think God permits me another major transition due to age, skills, health, and many other family parameters. Maybe the next transition will be learning how to lead a retirement life without a proper pension and with fluctuating financial markets that offer no fixed returns!

You might be wondering how these things are connected.

For the last few months, many highly paid executives have been getting laid off. Maybe Japanese Miyazaki mangoes could be part of the solution! If someone with international experience and someone with traditional farming techniques join together, India can become a truly Atmanirbhar Bharat.

We also have different desi varieties. Kesar mango, a GI-tagged variety from Gujarat, sells for $15 to $25 per box in international markets. Alphonso mango from Maharashtra sells for ₹700 to ₹2,000 per dozen. Noorjahan mango from Madhya Pradesh costs between ₹500 and ₹1,500 per piece. Safeda from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu sells for $10 to $15 per kilogram.

If we have enough money for food, healthcare, shelter, and a few basic luxuries, it is more than sufficient to lead a comfortable life.

We should also realize that even if we leave behind a lot of wealth for our children, statistics show that they may not always get along well. Their trajectories, lifestyles, choices, aspirations, and spending patterns will be different. These differences often become reasons for disagreements among siblings.

God has already designed a way for us to live on this earth and has also fixed a time for our departure. Accept the fact, live meaningfully, and move on.

Ravi Saripalle