Overview
- Companion markets Einstein as an agent with a virtual computer that can enter Canvas, watch lectures, read materials, write essays, join discussions, and auto‑submit assignments from a student’s account.
- Founder Advait Paliwal defends the tool as an inevitable shift in education, comparing adaptation to earlier transitions to calculators, the internet, and Google.
- Reporters note there is no independent verification of Einstein’s capabilities, raising doubts about its autonomy, output quality, and whether hidden human labor could be involved.
- Inside Higher Ed highlights that the project appears small and unbacked by major venture capital, and analysts urge testing and validation rather than assumptions about performance.
- Faculty voices and the MLA’s AI task force flag agentic browsers as a growing threat to academic integrity and LMS credibility, with warnings about policy violations, weak detection strategies, and the need to redesign assessments and online learning safeguards.