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A revolution is quietly taking place in academic and scholarly research prompted by the advent of AI research tools. This will reshape the very nature of our studies and greatly accelerate synergies and collaborations across academic fields.

As I write this at the dawn of 2025, I believe a scan of a few of the most recent developments in generative AI in higher education helps to illuminate the path this technology will take in the coming year.

More than two decades ago, I advocated enabling students to follow the evolving developments and topics in the classes I taught through news blogs. I called the concept “semester without end.”

The new year may bring a host of virtual assistants and administrative staff to higher education. They will begin as assistants to humans, then over time they will evolve into autonomous AI staff members.

A number of factors are converging to create a huge storm. Generative AI advances, massive federal policy shifts, broad societal and economic changes, and the demographic cliff combine to create uncertainty today and change tomorrow.

Anthropic last month took the lead in providing early access to basic AI agents for the masses. This is a huge leap forward from the chat bots that have dominated early generative AI.

We may be just months away from an influx of embodied AI robots. Those are, in many cases, humanoid bots powered by autonomous AI.

The app initiates personalized conversations and offers responses without a prompt. This signals a shift toward agentic AI, where models act more like colleagues.