As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to automate everything from data analysis to writing, one researcher warns that the greatest danger to academia may not be ignorance but over-dependence.

In his paper The New Scholar: What’s Next for Professors in the Age of AI, Professor Hamid Zand of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran examines how the rise of intelligent systems is redefining what it means to be a scholar. The work is both a roadmap and a warning: use AI wisely, or risk losing the very qualities that make human inquiry unique.

Zand writes: “An academic scholar should use AI as a tool to search for evidence and documentation, summarize sources, analyze results, and assist in writing a report of the findings.” In his view, AI can help manage the growing flood of information, but it should remain an assistant, not an author.

He cautions, however, that: “any help in generating hypotheses or research questions can be misleading. Over-reliance on AI, even in searching for evidence and not studying the sources, gradually leads to a reduction in brain capacity.” The danger, he argues, is not in the technology itself but in scholars surrendering the habit of deep reading and original thought.

The paper concludes that the modern academic must strike a new balance: let AI handle mechanical tasks, but keep the creative and interpretive work firmly human. Machines may collect facts, Zand suggests, but meaning, curiosity, and moral direction remain our own responsibility.