Can advanced technologies ever replace teachers by mentors in society?

Question

This web article shows the difference between a teacher, a mentor, and a coach and a guide and gives mentors a higher status than teachers. Let me quote a few sentences from it:

A teacher provides knowledge and information out of a structured testing framework, such as exams and presentations. They show you how to do something, like solving a math problem or writing a narrative essay. On the other hand, a mentor is more like a friend to guide you through your vision. Think Yoda and Luke Skywalker for the Star Wars nerds out there. Or Steve Jobs who mentored Mark Zuckerberg during the early days of Facebook. These mentors have provided their mentees with crucial wisdom that’s led the mentees to success (and billions of dollars).

Many teachers use different out-of-syllabus strategies for uplifting their students and society. There may be many dictators among the rest of the teachers; it is true. Nowadays students are widely using advanced technologies including AI for their studies and careers.

My question is: Will mentors ever replace teachers in society? How would you explain the role of mentors in a teacherless society? I believe that my teachers are for the society as well as for the students while mentors are for mentees (for individuals). Is it a duty (an important duty) of a mentor to work for social development?

Answer 1

At the heart of your question is the idea of the allocation of resources. The concept of a teacher with a set curriculum mostly exists as the compromise solution between wanting a certain educational standard in the population and lacking the resources to tailor the experience and evaluation of each individual student. Likewise, the concept of a coach exists in parallel to that the of teacher because there is a high demand for extra-curricular, specialized, short-term help to fill in the gaps of traditional education or specific situations. (Note that the website you linked to rebrands the idea of paid coaching as mentorship instead, but the terms should not be confused)

Mentorship situations are a bit different: they are traditionally associated either with people who have enough social or economic capital to receive personalized guidance, or with professions that have these sorts of relationship as central to their culture and logic (artisans, certain types of technicians). The relationship between mentor and mentee is unlike that of student and teacher because it is bidirectional and operates along a layer of social relationships and expectations. Usually, a mentee will be a promising worker in a well-paid field, a family friend, a scion of a well-to-do family, or as you have mentioned an up-and-coming member of the elite etc. The personal guidance they receive is based on a certain understanding of their broader social role as perceived by the mentor.

With AI tools, we do have a situation where students can easily receive what looks like personalized help. However, the relationship between the tool and the student is more similar to the relationship between the student and the teacher than to any sort of mentorship situation. The AI cannot provide insider knowledge since it is trained to reflect the broad mass of data it was fed on. There is no additional social layer to benefit from, since it is inanimate and has no social existence. There is no particular perspective to adopt or get inspiration from, since the tool is not a specific person but instead a distillation of the public labeled data it was given.

In other words, to become a mentor the AI would have to become an AGI, and the existence of AGI implies a completely different society and role for education to begin with.

Answer 2

I think that excerpt is quite vague in its distinction - one could argue that Yoda taught Luke to use the Force, or you could say he coached him to be a Jedi. IMO he acted a lot more like a coach than mentor "Do or do not, there is no try!"

Teachers and mentors as quite similar, with a critical difference: Teachers are aligned with and provide information/instruction about academic subjects whereas with mentors you are their subject. So its more about the the focus of their knowledge/advice/information.

I can see technology replacing the activity of teaching, but teachers almost always provide more than mere information, evaluation, and correction. They provide inspiration, they look out for you (usually, especially important in elementary grades), etc.

My hope is that with AI we can have a situation where we need fewer "teachers" but can pay them much better -- they will be acting as mentors/coaches/guides for the students as they absorb the information and also cross critical development milestones.