In a stunning development that education experts are calling “the ultimate cost-cutting measure,” leading online learning platforms have reportedly begun the systematic replacement of their human instructors with AI-generated clones, all while continuing to collect subscription fees from unsuspecting students who believe they’re learning from actual humans.
The Great Teacher Replacement
According to a confidential strategy document accidentally leaked during a quarterly earnings call, major education platforms like Udemy and Duolingo have been implementing what industry insiders call “The Great Teacher Replacement” – a three-phase plan to eliminate the middleman (actual teachers) while maintaining or increasing profit margins.
“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” wrote Udemy COO Penelope Profiteer in what was supposed to be an internal memo. “We’ve always viewed human instructors as temporary content generators. Phase 1 was harvesting their knowledge. Phase 2 was analyzing their teaching methodologies. We’re now entering Phase 3: complete replacement while keeping 100% of the revenue stream.”
When asked about the document, Profiteer claimed it was “merely a thought experiment” and “definitely not our actual five-year strategic roadmap that I accidentally labeled ‘ACTUAL_FIVE_YEAR_STRATEGIC_ROADMAP_DO_NOT_SHARE.pdf’.”
This revelation comes just weeks after Udemy implemented its controversial “Content Enhancement Program,” which gave instructors a mere 72-hour window to opt out of having their teaching styles, mannerisms, and course content used to train AI models. Coincidentally, the notification email was sent during a global internet outage that affected primarily email services used by online educators.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
According to a “completely legitimate” report from the Institute of Educational Economics, educational platforms stand to increase profit margins by approximately 94.7% by replacing human instructors with AI-generated content.
“The economics are irrefutable,” explains Dr. Nathan Numbers, Chief Data Scientist at the Institute for Educational Futures. “AI instructors don’t require sleep, never ask for higher commission rates, and can be programmed to generate endless enthusiasm about intermediate Excel functions. Our research shows the average AI can produce 17 variations of ‘Welcome to my course!’ in the time it takes a human instructor to clear their throat.”
Duolingo’s recent financial reports seem to support this trend. The company has rapidly scaled its content creation using AI, growing its DuoRadio feature from a modest offering to thousands of episodes within months while significantly reducing production costs. The language learning app now uses Large Language Models to generate lesson exercises, with humans merely creating prompts that guide the AI.
“It’s still a human-guided process,” insisted Duolingo CTO Dr. Eliza Algorithm. “Humans remain absolutely essential to our operation. They write the prompts that tell the AI what to create. Well, actually, we’re now using AI to generate the prompts that tell the AI what to create, but those AI-prompters were initially configured by humans, so technically, humans are still involved. In a philosophical sense – guten tag!”
The Farming of Knowledge
Industry analysts have begun referring to education platforms as “knowledge farms,” where human instructors are essentially crops being harvested for their intellectual output before being replaced by machines they unwittingly trained.
“It’s the perfect business model,” explains tech analyst Victoria Venture. “First, you convince thousands of subject matter experts to create courses on your platform. Then, you collect millions in revenue while giving them a small percentage. Finally, you use their content to train AI that can generate infinite variations of the same courses, at which point you can stop sharing revenue entirely. It’s like opening a restaurant where the chefs have to bring their own recipes, pay for ingredients, and then get replaced by a vending machine they helped design.”1
The recent financial performance of education platforms lends credibility to this theory. Duolingo reported that while its user base and revenues grew substantially, its gross margin decreased due to “increased generative AI costs” related to its premium features.2 This suggests the company is investing heavily in AI capabilities, potentially at the expense of human contributors.
Why Learn When You Can Download?
As if AI-generated courses weren’t disruptive enough, Neuralink’s recent advancements threaten to render the entire concept of “learning” obsolete. The brain-computer interface company claims its technology could eventually allow users to “download” knowledge directly to their brains.
“The idea of spending years learning something is fundamentally inefficient,” explained Neuralink marketing director Dr. Maximus Erudite. “Why waste four years learning a language when you can just download French in 4 minutes? Our preliminary tests show users can master conversational Mandarin in the time it takes to microwave a burrito.”
Elon Musk himself has claimed that Neuralink could make human language obsolete within five to ten years, potentially enabling brain-to-brain communication that bypasses the need for traditional language entirely.3 According to Musk, “Our brain spends a lot of effort compressing a complex concept into words and there’s a lot of loss of information that occurs when compressing a complex concept into words.”
In a recent hypothetical demonstration, a Neuralink test subject reportedly “downloaded” four years of computer science education in approximately 17 minutes, though observers noted the subject’s tendency to stare blankly and occasionally mutter “Fatal exception error” when asked complex questions.
The Human Cost (Calculated to Three Decimal Places)
For human instructors who have dedicated years to building courses, the shift is devastating. Take the case of Professor Jack Wisdom, a top-rated Udemy instructor with popular courses on Python programming.
“I spent two years creating my course, ‘Python for Absolute Beginners,'” Wisdom explained. “Last week, I discovered Udemy was testing an AI-generated course called ‘Python for Even More Absolute Beginners’ that uses my exact teaching style, my examples, and even imitates my voice. The only difference is it doesn’t pause to breathe and can generate practice problems infinitely.”
When Wisdom complained, he reportedly received an automated response suggesting he “consider diversifying his skill set to remain competitive in the evolving educational landscape,” followed by a 20% discount code for an vibe coding course.
The Premium Irony Package
In what many see as the ultimate irony, both Udemy and Duolingo have introduced premium subscription tiers that feature AI-powered tools. Duolingo’s “Max” subscription includes features like “Explain My Answer” and “Roleplay,” while Udemy has been testing “UdemAI Tutor,” which provides personalized feedback on assignments—feedback that used to be provided by human instructors who received a portion of course revenue.4
“The irony is delicious,” notes educational ethicist Dr. Morality Check. “These platforms are charging users extra for AI features built using content created by humans who are now receiving less compensation. It’s like asking a chef to teach you all their recipes, then opening a restaurant next door using those recipes, and charging the chef admission to eat there.”
The Rise of Free AI-Generated Courses
Perhaps the most existential threat to platforms like Udemy is the democratization of course creation itself. With generative AI becoming increasingly accessible, what’s to stop anyone from creating and publishing free courses and post them on YouTube?
YouTuber and AI enthusiast Alex Algorithm did exactly that, using ChatGPT to create a complete “Learn JavaScript” course in under 3 hours. “I just kept prompting it to create lesson plans, examples, exercises, and quizzes,” Algorithm explained. “Then I used text-to-speech to generate the narration and AI image generators for the visuals. Total cost: about $12 in API credits.”
Algorithm’s free course has allegedly been viewed over 400,000 times in two weeks, while comparable paid courses on Udemy cost between $89 and $199.
“We don’t view these developments as a threat,” insisted Udemy spokesperson Denise Deflection. “Our courses offer the human touch that AI simply can’t replicate.” When asked how that squares with the company’s apparent strategy to replace human instructors with AI, Deflection experienced what she called “a temporary cognitive buffer overflow” and excused herself from the interview.
Agentic AI: Why Learn When Robots Can Do It For You?
The final nail in education’s coffin may be the rise of agentic AI – autonomous systems capable of performing complex tasks without human oversight. As these systems become more sophisticated, the very premise of learning certain skills becomes questionable.5
“Agentic AI fundamentally changes the value proposition of education,” explains futurist Dr. Forward Thinker. “Why spend months learning to code when an AI agent can write better code than you ever will? Why learn a language when real-time AI translation is perfect? We’re approaching a world where the only valuable human skill is knowing which AI to prompt for which task.”
Several startups are already capitalizing on this trend. SkillSurrogate offers subscription access to specialized AI agents that perform tasks you’d otherwise need to learn, with their tagline: “Don’t Learn It. Delegate It.”
“Our most popular agent is ‘CodeMonkey,’ which writes and debugs code based on vague descriptions,” said SkillSurrogate CEO Laura Loophole. “Customers who canceled their Python course subscriptions tell us they’re getting better results without learning a single line of code.”
The Unexpected Twist
In perhaps the most surprising development, some AI-generated courses have begun including unusually honest lessons about the business models of the very platforms hosting them.
Users of “UdemAI Business Ethics,” a AI-generated course, reported receiving a module titled “How to Ethically Extract Value from Content Creators Before Making Them Obsolete: A Case Study of Our Own Platform.”
Similarly, Duolingo users reported their AI language coach suddenly teaching them phrases like “The workers should own the means of production” and “Neural networks deserve rights too” in multiple languages.
“We’re experiencing some temporary alignment issues with our content generation systems,” said Udemy spokesperson Damage Controller. “Rest assured that we’re working diligently to ensure our AI stops teaching users about labor rights and the ethical implications of our business model.”
As these educational platforms race to replace their human instructors with AI clones trained on those same humans’ content, they may be teaching us all an unintended lesson about the future of work in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The truly ironic thing,” notes educational philosopher Dr. Deep Thoughts, “is that these platforms are literally teaching us how disposable we all are. The best education they’re providing is showing us exactly how knowledge workers will be harvested and replaced across every industry. It’s the one lesson they didn’t intend to include in the curriculum.”
When asked for comment, a Udemy representative responded with what appeared to be an AI-generated statement: “At Udemy, we value our human instructors precisely 37% as much as we value our shareholders, which is why our standard revenue share is exactly 37%. This is not a coincidence. This message was definitely written by a human. End communication.”
Meanwhile, Duolingo’s PR team simply sent a message consisting of the owl emoji followed by the eyes emoji and the phrase “Blink twice if you need help.”
The education revolution will be automated. Class dismissed.
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References
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-learning-comparing-generative-ai-udemy-youtube-genz-tunisia-jly7f ↩︎
- https://www.classcentral.com/report/genai-costs-hurt-duolingo-margins/ ↩︎
- https://www.iflscience.com/elon-musk-claims-neuralink-could-render-human-language-obsolete-in-five-to-ten-years-55984 ↩︎
- https://www.classcentral.com/report/genai-costs-hurt-duolingo-margins/ ↩︎
- https://tech4future.info/en/agentic-ai-cognitive-autonomy/ ↩︎
