When I first joined academia, the rhythm of teaching and learning was very different. Assignments meant long hours in the library, photocopying journal articles, and typing references on a word processor. If you needed something from Arkib Negara, you snail-mailed them and waited weeks for a reply that often came too late. For the first class I taught, I inherited lecture notes consisting of stacks of OHP transparencies, which by then were already becoming obsolete as students moved to LCD projectors hooked directly to the PC.

By the early 2000s, knowledge access had changed dramatically. Students could search databases online, email researchers directly, and even join global forums. For those of us who lived through it, it felt like a revolution. Teaching had to adapt quickly. The lecturer was no longer the sole gatekeeper of knowledge; instead, we became navigators, guiding students through a rapidly expanding digital landscape.

One moment that struck me was when students came into class with wildly different perspectives. I might be discussing Derrida’s deconstructivism, only to face students quoting Marxist critiques that dismissed it as abstract and disconnected from reality. I wondered: Where on earth did they read Marxist works? The obvious answer was the internet, of course.

Fast forward 25 years, and we are at the edge of another shift of similar magnitude: the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Once again, education is being reshaped, and once again, we are being asked to rethink our roles as academics.

The First Boom: Digitisation and the Internet

For students in the late 1990s (such as I was), the internet was both exhilarating and overwhelming. Information that used to take weeks to obtain through interlibrary loans or bookstore orders was suddenly available at the click of a mouse. Online journals were scarce, but e-books, encyclopedias, and search engines transformed the way we worked.

I remember the sense of empowerment. We were no longer limited to what was physically housed in the campus library. I relied less on the shelves and more on refining my own online search skills, something I later taught my students. Suddenly they could explore international perspectives, find primary sources, and even email architects to ask about design motivations rather than reading second-hand interpretations.

Of course, new challenges followed. Not every source was reliable. Critical thinking and information literacy became essential. Students quickly learned to copy-paste, so academics had to teach not just what to learn, but how to evaluate information.

The Second Boom: The Rise of AI

I can’t help but feel that today’s AI tools such as chatbots, writing assistants, image generators, and code interpreters, are producing a similar sense of disruption. Students now digest information faster than ever. Need a quick summary of a 50-page article? AI can do it in seconds. Struggling with a difficult concept? A chatbot can explain it, provide examples, and even adapt its explanation until the student understands.

In many ways, AI acts as a tireless tutor, available 24/7, never impatient, never dismissive. For my generation, this is astonishing. We once carried around heavy reference books and lined up at copier shops. Now, the same knowledge can be conjured instantly on a smartphone.

I experienced this directly while tutoring my daughter in mathematics. I asked ChatGPT to explain Pi at a Form 2 level, and it delivered a clear, step-by-step explanation with short exercises, something I hadn’t been able to explain after decades away from the subject. Yet it wasn’t perfect. One in four of the practice questions it generated was unsolvable or wrong.

That moment captured both the power and the risk. AI is useful, but it hallucinates. The danger is that students may rely on it to generate knowledge, not just find it. How do we ensure they are developing their own intellectual voices and aren’t outsourcing their thinking? How do they know what’s correct and what’s fabricated?

Patterns and Lessons

The digitisation boom of the 1990s and today’s AI wave share a clear pattern: knowledge suddenly became more accessible, students gained independence from traditional gatekeepers, and educators had to adapt, moving from authority figures to facilitators.

Yet there is also a crucial difference. The internet changed access to knowledge; AI changed its production. The internet gave us tools to read more widely; AI now gives us tools to write, design, and even reason in ways that blur the line between human and machine contribution. This raises fresh questions: is it acceptable for students to brainstorm with AI, draft essays, or generate code? How far do we allow it to shape learning?

As a Gen-X looking back, the fears of the 1990s never materialised as threats. Instead of eroding scholarship, the internet expanded intellectual possibilities. We learned to teach digital literacy, to embrace global collaboration, and to guide students through information abundance. I suspect the same will happen with AI. It will not replace academics but will redefine our roles. Machines can transmit information, but we must nurture judgment, creativity, empathy, and ethical reasoning. Things they still cannot do.

Looking Forward

So where does this leave us? I think we should approach AI in higher education not with fear, but with curiosity. Just as we once adjusted to search engines and email, we must now adapt to generative models and intelligent tutors. Remember how annoyed we were when
students had access to more books than we did in the 1990s? The next revolution is here, and we’re not even at retiring age yet.

For students, AI represents a personalized, on-demand learning companion. For academics, it is an invitation to rethink teaching methods, redesign assessments, and reaffirm the uniquely human side of education. AI will be used to cut corners, but the most effective safeguard isn’t software—it’s conversation. Talking with students remains the best way to see if they understand what they’ve written or simply let AI generate it.

If history is a guide, this boom will not diminish us. It will push us to evolve. And just as the internet opened the world to my generation, I believe AI will open new horizons for the next.

Azari Mat Yasir graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from UTM, went to study virtual environment for his masters at The Bartlett, UCL, then messed around with educational pedagogies for his PhD at Sheffield University. After that went south, he gathered whatever that’s left of his shattered ego and pieced together another PhD, focusing specifically on the impact of OBE in architecture education, this time back in UTM. He now spends his days making friends with AI in the dark corners of his office in FABU, in hope Skynet would make him the leader of humanity when it takes over the world.

Source: UTM NewsHub