There is nothing that makes me lose faith in a lecturer than blatant and ignorant usage of AI. I write this after sitting through a lecture with so many AI generated images on the slides that it truly made me doubt whether the lecturer had even written the slides themself. I’m sorry professor, but if it’s this crucial for you to supplement your own intelligence with an artificial one, then I actually don’t trust your human ability to teach.
I know it’s a tool, I know it has its uses (and I wholeheartedly support use of AI for purposes that enhance or supplement human abilities to save or improve lives) but holy fucking shit I am not paying thousands of dollars in tuition to be shown AI slop on every single lecture slide.
It becomes so deeply hypocritical when it’s drilled into our heads not to cut corners, to be thorough and ethical researchers, that developing our own knowledge and abilities is what we come to university for, and yet the people who are meant to be transferring their knowledge to us do it artificially.
I desperately wish I could go through University without AI being a consideration. Think about how much time has been consumed in your lectures clarifying the AI usage rules for that paper. With all of that time combined and reallocated to actually teaching me, maybe I would finally understand statistics. I know I’m already on the highest horse known to man, but I’m at university to learn and earn a qualification. My degree is meant to be evidence of my understanding of a subject. I have never used AI in any way outside of services like google where I cannot turn the AI overview feature off (again, high horse, I’m aware, but this is an opinion piece so sue me). If I had the option to enroll in a version of my degree that certified that I achieved this solely with the application of my own intelligence – not artificial – I would. Degrees are already starting to mean less and less to employers, and I truly believe it will plummet exponentially as people who are reliant on AI to pass their papers with zero real understanding have an indistinguishable qualification from those who have done it without AI.
It truly infuriates me that in some papers AI use is not only encouraged but borderline required. Moreso, I’ve spoken with people in classes like this who are still blissfully unaware of the ethical and environmental implications. So, if this is the first you’re hearing this, allow me to inform you; Generative AI doesn’t whip that image or text out of nowhere, its pulling from countless images or texts that’ve already been created by humans to average out something that suits your prompt, often without the knowledge of the original creators. Essentially, generative AI is one big plagiarism machine. This is why we say that AI is truly incapable of creating art; it’s actually not capable of creating anything. AI is also infamously wasteful of energy and water. The cooling systems used to power ChatGPT consumes about 500ml of water for every 5-50 prompts. Multiply that by however many words however many people in the world are generating and suddenly ChatGPT alone is consuming enough electricity to run the empire state building for a year and a half in the span of 24 hours. It makes my skin crawl that a supposedly prestigious institution like a university would encourage (or, like I say, borderline require) students to use AI without properly informing students of how it works and the dangers of overusing it.
I do not care. You are not a child; Use your own intelligence.
