At the beginning of every class this quarter, all of my professors gave a lengthy speech on the use of AI in their class. For almost all of them, their stance boiled down to “you can use it, but it can’t write your paper and you have to cite it.”

This leaves me wondering–how did we get here?

AI has loomed over my entire college experience. Many of the big AI models, like Chat GPT, were released during my first year back in 2022. Now, you can’t even make a Google search without unwelcome interruptions from AI, and it’s even built into our phones.

While many may be welcoming the increased acceptance of AI, I am not one of those people. I can only seem to focus on the downsides. AI models can become biased against marginalized groups, are disrupting artists and the creative industry and have massive environmental impacts. All of those things concern me. However, what worries me even more is what it is doing to our critical thinking skills.

It’s easy to turn to AI to do a simple task like writing an email. But when you do that, you aren’t practicing the art of communication. Are you going to turn to AI to write your emails forever? Most people are writing emails in their jobs on a daily basis. Is that what your life is going to be?

Many of my classmates have found valuable uses for AI in school. I’ve heard that they use it to find sources, proofread papers or summarize articles. I get it, those can be time-consuming tasks, and college is a busy time. But we have a whole host of research librarians at Seattle U who can find sources for you, and are more than excited to help. We also have a Writing Center, where your fellow students will provide all the help you need to write and edit your paper. And when literacy rates are on the decline in the United States, is it really so bad to spend some time actually reading a paper and exercising your brain?

Even though there are plenty of resources that professors could be pointing us to on campus, I have some who have been telling their classes to turn to AI. Universities are places that promote learning and should be teaching their students how to think critically. The fact that so many are becoming okay with the use of AI is doing a disservice to their students.

I don’t want to be told to use AI to find my sources or help me write a paper. I want to be taught the best strategies for doing so, and shown where more resources for help are. Why should I be paying for a college degree if I’m not actually learning anything?

One of the top skills that employers look for is critical thinking. If we continue down this path of AI usage, students won’t be developing one of the most essential skills to gain employment. While AI might not be taking over jobs just yet, it might if we can’t learn to think for ourselves. The only people who will be getting jobs are the ones who can out-think AI, or at least add value.

It sometimes feels like I’m the only person in the crowd who doesn’t want to continue the march towards an AI-centered society. My classes and professors certainly see it that way. Even if they believe there is value in learning how to use AI to keep up with the job market, students are being done a disservice by only learning shortcuts. Professors are who should be teaching us how to think critically. If they too are turning towards AI, then how are students supposed to learn those all-important critical thinking skills?

I hope my fellow students can learn to see that they are being shortchanged with our professors pushing us towards AI all the time. We are all putting a lot of time and money into our education. We should be upset that our school only wants us to ask ChatGPT questions.

So I say, please stop telling me to use AI in my college classes. Even if it takes me longer, I want to exercise my brain and not contribute to all the pitfalls of AI. Where else I am supposed to learn how to out-think AI if not in a college classroom?