What do UWindsor students think of their peers using AI?

Generative artificial Intelligence is everywhere. Try and watch a silly YouTube video; the ad that will play in the middle will probably be from some sort of AI office slop platform or data annotation. Have a conversation with your uncle or a family friend you haven’t seen in a while; they’ll probably tell you all about how the job market is cooked, your degree is worthless, a robot is far better at your job (and cheaper), and you will be stuck as yet another overeducated barista.  

Scroll through Instagram Reels or TikTok and see the litany of finance influencers proclaim that even highly prestigious computer science or accounting jobs are in danger of being swept away by the AI revolution, and the only degrees with a good return on investment are nursing or finance. The rest of us might as well lay bricks. Watch the news and you will see politicians debate replacing teachers with a chatbot. It seems that no job, no degree, and no one is safe. So, what do university students, as those most under the gun by the so-called AI revolution think of their peers using AI? Do they perceive it as fraternizing with the enemy? Do they approve of its use whilst indulging themselves in it? Should its users be punished 

I decided to get to the bottom of this myself by asking a diverse group of UWindsor’s very own undergraduates what they think about their classmates using artificial intelligence.  

Students’ opinions on their peers’ AI usage tended to fall into three camps, two negative and one nuanced. Some view it negatively from an academic standpoint; using AI impedes one's critical thinking faculties, facilitates cheating and plagiarism, and raises standards to an inhuman level. Others are fine with their peers using AI for assistance in learning but draw the line at taking over one’s creative voice. Then there are the students whose bone to pick with their classmates is of an ethical nature, their concern is one of environmental impact and the spreading of misinformation.   

No one likes a cheater 

For many students, using artificial intelligence to complete assignments is unacceptable as it inhibits learning and is indicative of a lack of critical thinking skills. Some believe this defeats the purpose of getting a university degree. Others cite that they would not trust a future educator, nurse, lawyer, or doctor who takes short cuts in their learning. It is the lack of effort that they resent, calling AI usage the “fast-food” approach to higher education.  

One noted that they find it frustrating to be in a seminar with students who use ChatGPT to generate opinions, which lack originality and are filled to the brim with faux neutrality and “both-sideisms”. An opinion derived from your own thoughts and individual worldview will never beat that perfectly constructed response by a robot. 

 If you can’t beat an artificially generated opinion, you can’t beat an AI-generated essay. This artificial raising of standards to an “impossible” level will only push more students to use AI, as learning continues to take a backseat to grades in higher education.  

Others emphasized the unfairness behind their classmates using AI to generate entire assignments, complete assigned readings, and replace the individual's thoughts and creative processes. Especially when these AI generated essays pass unnoticed through AI detectors, professors and GAs/TAs, and receive high marks. How can the University claim to promote academic integrity if we (even when unbeknownst) reward plagiarism? How should honest students react when their efforts and honesty receive less praise than their cheating counterparts?  

As if group work is not perilous enough, one student told me a story that will be sure to make the hairs on the back of anyone’s neck stand up.  

“Last term, I was doing a group assignment and one of the students in the group used AI to write their section and we were unaware of this until our paper got flagged. It was only his section that was flagged as AI generated. My other groupmates and I lost sleep due to the stress of the situation, but the guy who used AI thought nothing was wrong. The professor ended up throwing those who didn’t use AI a bone and gave us the expected mark but failed the student who cheated.” – Concerned university student 

Given what other students warned against above, situations such as these, where students fail to see the problem with using AI to do their work for them instead of using it as an assistive tool, and drag their classmates down into plagiarism trials, will become more and more common.  

Cautious skepticism saved the cat 

The next group of students holds a more nuanced view of their classmates (and perhaps themselves) using artificial intelligence. For these students, AI can be useful as a learning tool, especially when faced with a less-than-optimal classroom learning experience. However, they are skeptical of its use beyond that of the learning tool and draw the line at using it to generate assignments/essays, which they consider to be “cheating”.  

One student added that students will use any technological advancement to their advantage and that using AI for academic work is acceptable as it increases efficiency. However, they note that they believe students are underinformed on the environmental impact of AI usage and express concern for the long-term impact of prolonged AI use on one’s cognition, as well as “Wall-E esque” dependence. 

The environment, anyone? 

The process of training a single AI model can consume energy and emit carbon emissions equivalent to hundreds of households in a year; the global AI energy demand is projected to exceed the annual electricity consumption of a small, developed nation like Belgium by this year (Ren and Wierman). What does this mean for us? More air pollution, drought, and hazardous materials. These adverse environmental impacts disproportionately affect low-income communities and the global south (Ren and Wierman). Notably, many data centers rely on dirty diesel generators, which emit toxic chemicals responsible for air pollution such as carbon monoxide, as well as water intensive cooling systems that use millions of gallons of water per day (McGrath). Worse still, in many American states, it is the taxpayer subsidizing the energy bill of some of the wealthiest companies on Earth. For the environmentally conscious undergraduate, this is enough to drive their judgment of their peers.  

Other students share a concern of a more societal nature; the spread of misinformation. Go on X, Instagram, or (if you’re old) Facebook, and you’ll be flooded by deepfakes - AI generated doorbell footage of bunnies or bears on a trampoline, and even AI generated articles about current events. As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it is becoming harder to tell what is real and what is fake. What happens when students relying on Claude or ChatGPT spread falsehoods in a seminar? What happens when that misinformation goes unaddressed? For many, these questions must be addressed given the nature of our post-truth society.  

UWindsor undergraduates perceive their peers who use AI negatively. While their reasons differ, ranging from concerns over fairness to drought, one thing is clear; students, much like their professors, are distrustful, resentful, and condemnatory of their peers who use Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and its offspring for their academics. Will this trend continue? Only time will tell.