Politically, academics are much more liberal than the average person. But Paul Bloom makes the excellent point that, in areas related to their work, academics are actually deeply conservative.
Asking a prof about AI is like asking a taxi driver to weigh in on Uber. I think I have good reasons for my (conservative) defense of tenure, but you’d be forgiven for assuming that, having worked for and benefited from the protections of tenure, I don’t want them taken away. Part of professors’ unwillingness to give up on lectures is that they take a long time to prepare—once that time is invested, we don’t want to start anew. We certainly don’t want to transform the university in a way that risks making us obsolete.
I feel this deep in my bones. It’s so hard to get universities to change, and professors are the primary reason why. AI—as I’ve written before—is coming for us in a way that most of my colleagues are not at all prepared to face. But they will have to face it in the end.