Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are becoming increasingly common for college students, but opinions about how the technology should be used vary widely.
Some students are optimistic about the role AI could play in the future, while others are wary.
Cooper Anderson, a pre-business major and member of Brigham Young University's AI in Business Society, shared his thoughts on the positives of AI.
“For me personally, I consider myself an AI opportunist, meaning the opportunity is way greater than the risk,” Anderson said.
When asked about potential ethical concerns surrounding AI, Anderson said he believes its use ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.
“Obviously, AI is a tool … a gun could be used for good things … and it could be used for terrible things as well … I think in the end it’s really up to the user,” Anderson said.
However, not everyone believes AI should be adopted so quickly.
Critics say the technology raises major ethical concerns, particularly around copyright and ownership of information.
“Use of AI cannot currently be ethical because there is not legislation surrounding copyright. There is not proper legislation to what is yours that AI generates and what isn't. And until such things are created, until such laws and policies are created, it is not ethical,” said Truman Barnes-Owens, a theatre arts education major at BYU.
Barnes-Owens also pointed to environmental concerns surrounding the widespread use of AI, particularly the large data centers required to power the technology.
“AI is not environmentally sustainable. And in certain countries, it is more environmentally sustainable," Barnes-Owens said.
He cited Google's AI as an example of this.
"Google's AI, for example, in Finland, they get 90% of their energy only from solar, and they use only recycled water to refresh their data centers. But because of the global nature of everything, it still can't be reliably used in any one place,” Barnes-Owens said.
Other students take a more middle-of-the-road approach, saying AI can be useful but should not be fully trusted.
Eldon Perkins, an engineering major at BYU, said one of the biggest challenges with artificial intelligence is that it can produce incorrect information while sounding completely confident.
“When you ask AI a question or give it a task to do, it will provide an answer, and it is trained to respond very confidently. But whether or not it responds confidently is not correlated with whether or not it is correct,” Perkins said.
Robert Walz, a BYU ethics professor, shared his thoughts on AI in education.
“I think you're disadvantaging students when you tell them not to learn how to use the tools of artificial intelligence, because that's their future,” he said.
Walz argued that rapid technological change has made it difficult for universities to determine what students should be learning right now.
“If you look back historically, people who do not embrace new technology are socially or economically disadvantaged. I think the biggest problem that we have in academia is that we don't know what to teach you right now, because nobody knows what the landscape is going to be five years from now,” Walz said.
As AI technology continues to evolve, conversations about its ethical use are likely to remain a topic of discussion on college campuses.