What’s a teacher for when every kid uses AI?

20 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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1:20

In this video Dan Novaes argues that AI tutoring apps are already taking over the "invisible" side of teaching—lesson planning, grading, and other backstage tasks—by learning from teachers' unpaid overtime. While AI can now deliver factual content, the uniquely human classroom role of reading students, motivating them, and spotting struggle before it’s voiced becomes more valuable than ever. Novaes urges teachers to master AI tools to compress the administrative workload and to double‑down on the interpersonal skills machines can’t replicate. He also proposes a new economic model: teachers can earn additional income by licensing the data they generate (lesson plans, grading patterns) to AI labs, a concept he promotes through the "Get Paid to Be Human" initiative.

Chapters

Every kid in America now has a tutor in their pocket that knows everything. So what's a teacher for? The answer is exactly why this job continues to survive, but changes more than any other. I wanna show you what teaching looks like when every student has AI and what the job actually becomes. Here's the thing about teaching. It's 2 jobs, the classroom side of the job, and then there's the invisible one. Lesson planning, grading worksheets, the late night and weekend grind that nobody sees. AI is already deep into that invisible job. What you might not realize is that those tutoring apps learn from teachers. Grading essays, lesson plans posted free online, answer explanations written by real teachers. The profession trained its own replacement on its own unpaid overtime. So here's where this leaves things. The part where a teacher just explains the facts, that shrinks because AI can do that now too. The part where a teacher reads a kid, motivates them, notices they're struggling before they say it, that grows. That's what parents actually want from school, and no app does that just yet. So master the tools so that the invisible job takes an hour instead of a weekend, and double down on the classroom skill no machine teaches. The way I see it, teaching's about to pay twice. Once for the human work only a teacher can do, and once for the data that work leaves behind. Every lesson plan, every grade training pattern, every bit of it is worth something, and the winners will collect both. If you're a teacher, you could be earning tens of thousands of dollars extra every year just providing your insights to the world's biggest AI labs. Follow Get Paid to Be Human and start getting paid for what you know instead of giving it out for free.