The First Agentic AI LMS Killer is Here

Einstein AI Companion promises to complete your Canvas classes

Today, I freaked out a little bit when I saw a LinkedIn post from Jason Gulya quoting John Warner’s article about Einstein AI Companion, an Agentic program that promises to complete a student’s work in Canvas. I had been expecting this. I did a quick duck down the “Are there any Agentic Systems that work in Blackboard, D2L, or Moodle?” alley with a Gemini Pro search. Nope. Nothing yet. I took a second to take a deep breath: my campus uses D2L. I know that Canvas might be the first LMS to be targeted by AI Agents, but it definitely won’t be the last. I sent a quick note of warning to our LMS administrator.

OK, so what is this beast? Here’s the landing page, just to get your blood boiling:

What every student wants, right? An agent that, while you are sleeping or out partying, completes all your school work. What could be better? Hmmm.

OK, so I didn’t get a lot of information from that landing page, but I got revved up. I wanted to find out about this new threat.

I Signed Up

So, I went to the Einstein website and signed up for a free trial (it requires a credit card and only gives you seven days). That’s when I saw the plans. I considered them pretty pricey, and definitely out of the realm of most students’ pocketbooks—but who am I to judge true desperation? Maybe there are some rich lazy kids who want grades but not knowledge. Who knows? There must be a market.

Full disclosure: I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford a subscription, so I used an old debit card with no money on it for the free trial. I also used my son’s PC because I didn’t want to get in trouble with my IT department.

The first thing that came up when I signed in was this:

I Installed the Agent

I didn’t really think it would install. My son has some very nice premium security on his PC—but the program installed into my profile instead, bypassing that security. It was on the computer now—whatever it was.

I Tried to Test It

I wanted to try using this program to complete the assignments in a Canvas Free-for-Teachers account where I house some course shells I use for a Virtual Exchange class I teach. I made a copy of the shell (there are NO students in this class), and I signed myself up as a student with a different email. I was ready to try Einstein. This is when I started to record my screen.

Frankly, the experience was a little daunting. I think it assumed a lot about me—that I knew how to code, that I knew what an extension or cookies were (I do, but that’s not the point). It seemed a bit too technical for most students that I know who get frustrated trying to install Zotero. This made me feel a little warmer inside.

I Freaked Out

I was only recording for 2:30 minutes when I discovered that Einstein is just a wrapper over OPENCLAW! AAAAAAAH I had just installed an agent that runs in the terminal in my son’s computer—potentially exposing EVERYTHING on it to the agent. I got off the recording ASAP to delete the program from my son’s computer.

When I told Einstein’s chat that I was upset, it tried to comfort me with this:

Needless to say, I chose Option 1. True to its word, it erased everything, but I didn’t believe this sneaky agent. I checked, rechecked, verified and reverified that it was gone. (I still might not sleep well tonight).

Then, I went snooping around. I found this in my “Workspace”:

Creepy.

My Overall impression of Einstein

It is a wrapper program over OpenClaw. It might work, but I’m not going to risk it. However, it is probably duping students, who have no idea how dangerous it is. You don’t know it is OpenClaw until AFTER you have installed it.

This is an entry program, nothing too sophisticated, but it is only the start of what is to come. This won’t be the first LMS that is targeted, and we can expect much more powerful agents to populate this space in the the near future (especially if Einstein makes money). Until now, we have only faced browser-based agents that weren’t specifically targeting one particular LMS system, but I think Einstein just shot the first volley over the bow of education—especially online education.

What can we do about this? Design your courses carefully, scaffold, make them process oriented, and put in some hard stops where students have to do a hard thing that you grade before they can move on. (If you want to know more about all this—read the rest of my Substack, OK?)