Three Questions to Ask Before Using an AI Avatar

Hello,

It is Yannick Lyons from The Teaching Twin Newsletter.

Before adopting an AI Avatar, it is worth asking three higher-level questions. Not about features. Not about efficiency. But about structure and purpose.

There is a meaningful distinction between intellectual judgment and physical availability.

Some elements of teaching depend on interpretation, discretion, and responsiveness to nuance. These include evaluation, mentorship, and moments where disagreement is productive. They cannot be delegated without changing their character.

Other elements depend primarily on clarity and consistency. Structured explanations, conceptual walkthroughs, foundational framing, and multilingual access do not gain depth simply because they occur live. They require expertise, but not simultaneous presence.

The first category must remain instructor-led.
The second can be extended without diminishing authorship.

The decision begins here.

Most courses are not limited by intellectual ambition. They are limited by bandwidth.

Students often experience friction not because material is beyond them, but because access to explanation is uneven. Office hours fill. Sections drift. Language differences slow comprehension. Schedules fragment attention.

If the constraint is instructor availability rather than intellectual complexity, the problem is structural. Delegation in this context is not about replacing teaching. It is about removing bottlenecks that restrict access to it.

If, however, the constraint is conceptual depth or analytical engagement, no tool resolves that. Only redesign does.

Understanding the constraint prevents misapplication.

Dialogue, critique, and evolving interpretation are part of how advanced learning develops. In these spaces, the instructor’s presence is not incidental; it is formative.

At the same time, not all variability is valuable. When explanations differ across sections in ways that create confusion rather than insight, the issue is not academic freedom but delivery.

The question, then, is not whether to standardize, but where.

If variability contributes to intellectual development, preserve it.
If variability produces noise, consider stabilizing it.

These three questions move the discussion away from technology and toward design.

AI avatars are not a statement about the future of teaching. They are a decision about allocation. About where instructor time has the greatest impact. About which moments require live judgment and which require accessible explanation.

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