Artificial Intelligence, UMD and You: The Future of Generative AI on College Campuses
Never before has technology impacted our lives as much as it does today. In recent decades we have seen an unprecedented advancement in technology that is used by an increasing number of people. From the internet, to smartphones, to social media, these developments have drastically changed many of our lives. It can be quite difficult to remember the last time we didn’t use the internet or our phones, as they have become a necessity for school, work and daily life. Modern technology has become so ingrained in our culture that it would be almost impossible to remove it. So society has embraced this evolving technology as part of our lives.
In the last year, we have seen one specific type of technology rise drastically in use, importance and discussion. That type of technology is artificial intelligence, or just AI. While AI has been in use in many different fields for decades, it has not been something most people have used, until recently. There has been a rise in use of AI by more and more people, specifically the use of artificial neural networks. The kind of artificial neural networks that are commonly used today are known as generative AI.
This image is generated using an AI tool. The prompt used was “college students studying.”
These types of artificial neural networks are used to generate content based on prompts submitted by users. The content produced by generative AI can range from short sentences, full essays, to even images and videos. If you insert a prompt into a generative AI, it will give you exactly what you requested. If you want an essay about the history of World War I, it will generate that for you. If you want an image of human beings in a classroom, it will generate that for you. Though it might generate images of the people looking creepily at the camera.
The reason as to why generative AI has become so prevalent in the last year is that it is an incredibly easy and fast process to get ideas, written works or images generated for you to use. Major companies like Microsoft and Google have noticed this and have created their own generative AIs to go up against the biggest names in the field like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Generative AI has made creative processes that usually take hours or days take only a few seconds or minutes. If you have an essay for a college class that’s due in an hour and you haven’t started writing it, you can just put the prompt for the essay into ChatGPT and it will generate the full essay for you in seconds. This is exactly why AI has become such a controversial topic in universities.
In recent months, there has been a large debate over the use of generative AI being used in college campuses by both students and instructors. The main source of the debate comes from concerns caused by students using AI to complete their assignments, and instructors using AI in their courses. All of these concerns mostly focus on if it should be allowed to use generative AI in classes, or if it is too similar to plagiarism and therefore should not be allowed to be used at all. This debate over AI has become a hot topic in colleges all over the world, including the University of Minnesota Duluth.
On April 3rd 2024, a panel discussion was held at the University of Minnesota Duluth titled Student Perspectives on AI. This discussion was held to discuss the different perspectives and beliefs UMD students have on AI and its use on campus and a possible policy for the use of AI at UMD. During the discussion UMD students shared their thoughts on AI and what the university should take into consideration going forward with policies regarding the use of generative AI.
One of the main questions addressed during the discussion involved if students have had experiences with instructors establishing policies on AI in their courses. Multiple experiences were shared about AI policies at UMD in the fall semester of 2023 and the spring semester of 2024. While the policies varied from instructor to instructor, they could be broken down into three categories. The policy could either completely allow AI to be used for assignments, restrict AI on some assignments but not others or completely forbid AI from being used on any assignment.
The reason as to why instructors are completely prohibiting the use of generative AI in completing assignments is because if a student uses an AI generator to complete their assignment for them, they aren’t really completing it. Using AI to complete assignments can have similarities to using plagiarism to complete assignments. With plagiarism, you are taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. With generative AI, you are still taking words that you yourself did not write. However, unlike regular plagiarism, you are contributing to the work by putting in a prompt that generates the content, but the content still is not original.
The way this generative AI works is by training the AI using data collected from the internet. These artificial neural networks are fed so much data and trained using it so that they are able to generate responses for any possible prompt. All of this different data is taken from many different sources. This means that there is no source for this prompt, you are not able to know where this information came from. Because there is so much data fed into these neural networks, the AI sometimes makes mistakes and gives out misinformation as well.
The result of this is content that has no source, is not created by the person who puts in the prompt, and may or may not be correct. While this often results in work that is very obviously created by AI and easy to catch, it is still content that would not pass most assignments in a university course. Instructors now have to deal with not just students passing off plagiarized work as their own, but also passing off AI created work as their own too. This is not the only case of AI being used on campus.
In the discussion, most UMD students present had negative perspectives towards AI, but there were those who thought that the technology did have a use. There were students who pointed out how generative AI can be used for other purposes besides simply using them to finish an assignment for you. When working on an assignment, a student could use generative AI to give themselves ideas to work off of as inspiration.
Some students shared experiences of instructors encouraging this use of AI in their courses. In these courses, students were allowed to use AI under certain conditions. Either that the AI was just used for inspiration and as practice for their assignments or they could turn in assignments using AI if the use of the technology was properly stated. These different policies regarding AI all depended on the specific instructor and the specific course.
General policy for AI use at UMD is still mostly on a case to case basis, but the university is currently working on figuring out a specific policy for use of generative AI tools by students and instructors. With the widespread use of generative AI technology still being so new, there is not much precedent for how universities should handle this situation. UMD has one policy for plagiarism that impacts all courses, but there is not one policy for AI yet.
The discussion ended with the UMD students writing notes detailing what they think the university should take into consideration regarding AI. Some of the ideas shared by students included having to get permission by instructors to use AI on assignments, documenting student and instructor use of AI, and having instructors help students understand how to use AI in their courses. Students also left ideas for other important topics involving AI, ranging from the relationship with generative AI and human creativity, and how AI uses a large amount of natural resources.
As of right now, the debate over the use of AI on college campuses is still going strong, and UMD is not an exception. Fortunately, we have spaces like the Student Perspectives on AI discussion that lets students discuss this topic in a collaborative and respectful setting. As the conversation continues, more and more progress is being made about what exactly to do about AI.
The university is making sure to listen to what the students are saying about this topic, and they are taking it into consideration when moving forward with a UMD policy for the use of generative AI. However, AI is constantly evolving and changing, so our handling of AI needs to change alongside it. If we don’t keep up with the growth of AI, it will leave us behind. Even after policies are made, they will possibly need to change to take into account how the use of AI changes.
This larger discussion of AI in colleges is not going away anytime soon, and it will continue to be a prevalent and controversial topic. In the coming months, we will see UMD and other college campuses around the world establish their policies for the use of AI on their campuses. As the semesters go by and more students and instructors use AI, we gain a better understanding of how exactly it’s used and how it impacts assignments. We will continue to see the impact of generative AI throughout the following semesters, and it is important for us to make our perspectives on AI heard.
As AI becomes another part of our daily lives like the internet and smartphones, make your thoughts on it heard. The policies regarding AI use are still being made, and university students are in a spot where their voices are some of the most important for this conversation. If you have any concerns or thoughts on AI, now is the time to discuss it. We still don’t know for sure if AI is the future, but one thing for certain is that the future isn’t determined yet, so make your voice heard. If UMD hosts another discussion to talk about AI, or if they have resources where you can email or call in about your thoughts on AI, make use of these resources. If you want to discuss the use of AI campus, then find the places where you can discuss it.