Why I Hate AI and Why You Should, Too

Graphic by Grayson Morris

Semesters always begin the same way: on the first day of class, you read the syllabus. I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed a few new additions to the boilerplate syllabus this year, though. It seems like almost every syllabus that includes any form of writing, research, or math has a new AI policy. And the most alarming part—they almost seem to be advocating for AI usage in the classroom.

It feels like every professor has a policy that says “sure, you can use AI. Just don’t let it write your paper.” Some research and information literacy courses have begun to promote AI usage as a tool. I always thought that was interesting back when AI was something of a novelty. Now that it’s become a pervasive fixture in society and the workforce, though, I’m disturbed that the usage of AI in school is not only tolerated, but codified into our syllabi as acceptable. 

To play a little devil’s advocate for faculty—I think I see the intention here. If students think it’s okay to use AI during research and drafting, surely that will keep them from letting AI write their papers and make their presentations. But for faculty to compromise and actively promote and encourage the use of AI in their classrooms? To me, this is unacceptable of an institution of higher education. Students are paying tuition and housing to come here to develop critical thinking skills to serve them in the workforce, not learn to outsource all of their thinking to generative AI models that can’t differentiate between right and wrong. For professors and educators to not only allow, but to encourage this cheapens everyone’s education. What is the point of a degree if students aren’t actually required to work for it? When individuals make the decisions to let AI do the “menial” tasks, like make outlines and draw up lists of sources for research, what does that say about all Meredith students? To me, the message is clear: Meredith graduates don’t know how to do the work.

AI usage certainly seems innocuous. So long as it isn’t writing your papers or doing your tests, isn’t that learning still? But this line of thinking ignores the key fact that college isn’t just about GPA and passing the class, it’s about growing one’s ability to think critically about the world around them. If students begin to blindly believe every fact that AI spits out when asked instead of searching for and vetting sources themselves, how will they spot a dubious medical claim on social media in ten years? If students feed all the complicated journal articles that they don’t want to decipher into nice, approachable summaries, how will they learn to read and analyze jargon in their industry? If you don’t take fifteen minutes to write an email to a professor or prospective employer, how will you learn to work with a team in the workplace? The point logically becomes that if you don’t develop the skills that you outsource to AI, you have no basis to develop deeper skills. Writing an essay using the facts regurgitated to you by a machine that considers scholarly journals to be equally as valuable as a Reddit comment may seem like learning, but the fact of the matter is that you didn’t learn to understand the information provided. What does it matter if you make the presentation or write the essay yourself if you don’t know what you’re writing about? An over-reliance on AI isn’t just undermining the integrity of your degree—it’s destroying your ability to think, period. 

I find it darkly ironic that it feels like everyone everywhere is constantly telling us that our generation is the most unpleasant to work with, that we’re all terrible and lazy and lack work ethic and can’t talk to people, and then turn around and also tell students that it’s okay to be lazy and not do the work and not learn to work with other people in the name of “progress.” Considering that the unemployment rate for college graduates aged 22 to 27 just surpassed the national unemployment rate, does now really seem like the time to be knee-capping young people’s critical thinking skills with generative AI? AI is already blocking young people from entry level jobs, with employers electing to hire robots and devices over their children’s generation, so why are we helping our competition by effectively saying “I don’t know how to do this” and shifting all work onto AI?

Administrative tasks suck. No one likes to painstakingly comb through facts and figures and weirdly worded phrases to find the information they want. No one craves to write emails, no one is interested in data entry and no one wants to admit that they don’t understand something. These growing pans are necessary, though, in becoming functional, well-educated women in society. This is what college is about, too: the tedious, unpleasant work is just as important as the end result. And for Meredith College as an institution to encourage us to just shuffle off the hard parts is disappointing! What am I paying you for if you’re just going to tell me to let AI do it?! Meredith College is letting down its students and its faculty by cheapening its legacy of producing educated women with generative AI. 

An additional, oft forgotten con of AI is its environmental impact. In order to produce that outline or email, AI needs water to keep its servers cool while it “thinks.” And what do you know, people also happen to need water. The UN Environmental Program estimates that “Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million.” AI is also taxing on electricity production, too. According to UNEP, a request made to ChatGPT requires ten times as much electricity as a Google search. The physical data centers that AI operate out of can have a toll, too. UNEP points out that these centers require significant amounts of rare-earth materials, many of which are mined in very destructive ways, in order to build the physical computers, and once those computers are through with their lives, the mercury and lead of electronic waste live on. To me, it’s perfectly logical: why would I cause all of this damage, to myself and to the world, when I can use that pink squishy thing in my skull for free? Thinking is free! No subscriptions, no water contamination and no lead leaching into the soil from electronic waste. It simply is not worth it.

I’m sure to many of you, I sound like some old woman going on about “that dang phone” and how kids these days don’t know cursive (I will be dying on the hill that scanning a QR code to access the menu is worse, though). I want to make it clear: I am not afraid of technology. AI could one day have a place in our workforce and our classrooms—it just isn’t the one I’ve seen so far. Generative AI is its own beast, and I believe that any benefits we derive for it will be paid for in the long run, be that through paywalls, contaminated water, or a complete loss of critical thinking skills. AI is new, and we don’t even fully understand all the implications and consequences of AI usage. It seems shortsighted to dive headlong into such a new, easily confused technology and begin to integrate it as a fundamental part of our lives. For young people, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s competition. The world seeks to write off the incoming generation as irrelevant, and I’m begging you to not make it easier for them to. Meredith College should take a stand on the side of its students, and reject AI as a whole. 

One day in the near future, maybe we’ll strike the right balance and find a way to use AI that doesn’t involve outsourcing our thinking. Maybe you think you’ve already found it. In the meantime, I’ll be digging my heels into the sand and sticking stubbornly to doing my writing and research the old-fashioned way.

By Lola Mestas, Associate Editor