Andrew Daume
Greg sits in the library, hunched over his computer. He racks his brain while pondering his thesis statement for his final paper of the semester. This is a subject he’s been researching for months for this class. Greg knows this subject like the back of his hand, but he just can’t get the wording right, and it’s driving him crazy. So he asks ChatGPT. ChatGPT proceeds to spit out a perfectly worded paragraph for his thesis, not a single error in sight. He copies and pastes it without a second thought.
If Greg didn’t ask ChatGPT for an intro, would the one he would’ve come up with have been better? Would it have stimulated his learning more? He’ll never know. These types of AI usages happen every day at Merrimack, and at Colleges all around the world. Not to mention how people from all over the globe are utilizing ChatGPT and similar AIs in a multitude of ways every day. Greg is not a real Merrimack student, but there are students at every college just like him who utilize AI just like he does daily.
For college campuses specifically, AI usage is certainly more often used than for the average person, as students will use it for most, if not all, assignments. This utilization of AI has the potential to cause significant changes in the higher education space, and both teachers and students alike have little concrete information to see how AI will affect college in the long term.
William Saunders is a sophomore at Merrimack, and he feels AI is useful, but feels he gets more use out of college without it. “It is a very helpful and convenient tool, but I feel like its use will inhibit my own learning and skill-building overall. Will did not shy away from its environmental implications, mentioning he didn’t feel right using it with “all of its world-ending implications.” ChatGPT’s continued usage consumes loads of energy, along with all of the water used to cool the multitude of processing units.
Using AI opens users to a vast wealth of knowledge, but the convenience of obtaining it instantly ruins the research process that permits information to stick. While it makes studying easier in the short term, it may breed professionals who lack a substantial wealth of understanding in their industry. Even if this knowledge gap doesn’t widen, older generations educated before AI are much more likely to look down upon the newer generations, which could hurt their job applications come graduation.
“It’s exactly the same as plagiarism”. Chuck Scott, a communications professor at Merrimack College, informed me about his distaste for AI. “It’s on the student to want to do the work unassisted; if you cheat yourself, you’re only hurting yourself”. Chuck believes not only will the rise of AI hurt students post-graduation, but the growing reliance on AI will harm the worth of higher education. He expressed how he is already seeing a lack of “cohesive thoughts” in his creative assignments since the explosion of AI.
In its current state, most students treat AI as an all-knowing entity that solves any question thrown at it. But models like ChatGPT and Microsoft Co-Pilot are not perfect, as their databases are infrequently updated, but when it comes to higher education, infrequently is often not enough. ChatGPT’s latest model was updated in June 2024, and any information or updates past that date are not in ChatGPT’s responses, which could potentially skew relevant context for current-day news.
Although AI seems to have largely negative implications for College, there is still hope for higher education in the hands of the current and growing generations. There’s a movement in pop culture with Gen Z and millennials for “slow tech”, pushing the usage of slower and older tech for the sake of both learning and the environment. If this catches on, Greg might take the extra time required to meticulously craft his thesis independently, ensuring both no plagiarism and a complete hunt for research.
