{"id":201122,"date":"2026-04-01T01:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T01:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:35:10","slug":"professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Professors in Phased Retirement Are to Participate in AI Pilot Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amherststudent.com\/article\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/\">Professors in Phased Retirement Are to Participate in AI Pilot Program<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amherststudent.com\/article\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/\">https:\/\/amherststudent.com\/article\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-01 01:25:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"amherststudent.com\">amherststudent.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Association of Amherst Students (AAS) has approved a new AI pilot program called \u201cVirtual Faculty Engine,\u201d aimed at professors in phased retirement, after a 35-20 faculty vote in favor.<\/li>\n<li>The initiative intends to create online avatars of professors for students\u2019 interactions, featuring avatar face scans and three hours per week of audio recordings to imitate their voices.<\/li>\n<li>The aim of the program is to preserve retiring professors&#8217; educational experiences and their exclusive research for future generations.<\/li>\n<li>Amherst College has purchased over 500 terabytes of RAM and plans to construct a small data center near Book &amp; Plow Farm to support the program.<\/li>\n<li>The new data center construction is planned to be completed by 2032, although AI operations will temporarily continue through Frost Library\u2019s computing operations.<\/li>\n<li>Some faculty, like Johnson A. Chapel Professor of Geology LeBrun Jane, are excited about the program&#8217;s long-term educational benefits, while others criticize it as detrimental to the college\u2019s legacy.<\/li>\n<li>The plans and additional details are scheduled to be shared in a school-wide email on Friday, following the ongoing discussions and initial approval.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professors in Phased Retirement Are to Participate in AI Pilot Program https:\/\/amherststudent.com\/article\/professors-in-phased-retirement-are-to-participate-in-ai-pilot-program\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-01&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/amherststudent.com\/content\/images\/2026\/03\/AAS-AI.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201124,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201122\/revisions\/201124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}