The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an essay from two faculty members from St. Johns College about artificial intelligence (AI) increasing loneliness among college students.
They cited in this essay that academic work is one of the leading uses of AI software – and it is true that this is a problem. However, I feel these observations are applicable to more technologies than just AI, and the concerns the writers present, while valid, are not as unique or new as some may believe.
AI is a big overgrown buzzword right now. Google is pushing Gemini with all its might, Microsoft is doing much the same with Copilot and that is all to say nothing of the countless rugged little “disruptive” start-ups that have emerged from the gold rush of techo-babbling self-described futurists rushing to plant their flag in what they claim is the signature software infrastructure of Web 3.0. It can thus be scary for the layperson to try engaging with the topic of AI in a way that is both reasonably careful and pragmatic about the future of tech and every other industry it touches – or in other words, pretty much all of modern life.
Doesn’t this all sound too familiar? Like the development of social media, the internet, computers and ultimately a whole family tree of tech tools dating back to the almighty printing press, we are seeing AI and the marketing thereof push us to a drastic jump in the average level of technical understanding that is required to function in everyday life, especially as a student.
In that way, it is not hard to see the parallels between this scare around ChatGPT’s new “study mode” and something that I remember hearing over and over in my school days: “Never use Wikipedia as a source!” Luckily, I managed to avoid being sucked into Wikipedia or any other sites with vast amounts of information. In fact, these sites continue to not ruin my college experience each and every day.
I believe the same is true of AI. College students may indeed be more withdrawn from their peers than they have been in the past and their college experience would likely be affected by that change. However, the prevalence of consumer AI in these students’ lives seems less like a sickness and more like a symptom. Although AI is seemingly the easy and obvious target when searching for a shift in the online culture that students are so frequently attuned to, it seems more likely that the aftermath of a global pandemic, an ongoing recession in the midst of constant political violence and rhetoric and the continued monopolization of the tech industry by companies like Meta who are using social media algorithms to push AI slop content by the ton are some of the major contributing factors to the collective breath in that the digital generations are refusing to let out.
At the end of the Chronicle piece, the authors prove they understand there are no easy brutish solutions to the loneliness that afflicts students and their academic prospects. Although New Hampshire legislators would seem to disagree with new projects, like the student phone ban taking hold in our state, the answer to problems presented by technology is rarely to simply ban the technology. Although I do not agree with many companies’ marketing of AI products to consumers, especially with how many of those products seem yet unfit for sale, the fact remains these products do have a limited but real use factor for those consumers. It seems so far that students are not using AI for their academics because it is a trend; they are using it because it is helpful.
With that, however, the authors’ position that the only way to break the divide between students and their peers and professors is to win them over and show them the value in person-to-person connection stands tall. Maybe it is optimistic, but for where we are in the AI boom, I maintain hope that many students can be coaxed out of their shells with what the authors describe as a “horizontal” model of education, where students are on an equal level of discussion with peers and professors both.
It must seem like a monumental task with the continued governmental attacks on and defunding of public education, but we cannot betray a lack of trust in the value of education by giving in to regressive ideas about technology. This is the time to fight through the noise to reach and shape the coming generations of learners and tech users.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
