AI might be here to stay, whether you like it or not | Opinion | kansan.com

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The op-ed below does not necessarily reflect the views of the University Daily Kansan and its members.

Like most students, you’re probably stressing over classes, falling behind and procrastinating. Your last resort is to turn to AI. To fix, polish or fully write an essay that you just don’t have the time nor energy to work on. 

Avoiding the possibility of academic dishonesty that may be occurring, you turn the work in and leave the grading up to the professor or teaching assistant. 

Let’s say the teaching assistant is having a hard time grading and results to AI to grade these papers.

Now imagine your professor or teaching assistant is in the same predicament. Classes are getting cancelled left and right, or just not moving as fast as they like them to. To course correct for the upcoming exam they have to resort to making an entirely new exam to fit the material covered. In a desperate attempt, they resort to AI to make up for it. 

The outsourcing done by AI goes far beyond taking jobs and can go as far as outsourcing real human interaction. 

As artificial intelligence continues to develop, so does the over-reliance on it. 

According to the Digital Education Council, a global alliance of universities focused on education innovation, it found that about 86% of students across all of their studies use AI. About 54% of students use AI daily or weekly. 

The most use out of AI seems to be searching for information (69%), checking grammar 42% and summarizing documents (33%).

The argument that taking these shortcuts makes our brain slower always appears in online discussions, but I beg to differ. It’s not that AI cuts away at internal memory, the internet just works faster. 

Since the inception of large language models, the question always asked of artificial intelligence is: what kind of threat can it pose to education and learning? Whether you oppose the use of AI doesn’t matter to me. It’s inescapable. 

With Google and Microsoft incorporating large language models, Gemini and Copilot respectively, it’s simply too difficult to escape the use of artificial intelligence when searching for basic information now. 

Recently, we’ve seen the tech industry stock market crash over China’s advancement in artificial intelligence. According to the New York Times, “DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading AI companies rely on.” 

DeepSeek is not only using cutting-edge tech at a fraction of the cost but it is open sourced, meaning it’s free. 

In the past, we saw these same arguments when Google possibly did the same thing. The “Google effect” was a phenomenon where people were less likely to remember information if they knew they could easily access it online.  

As a psychology student, I’ve developed an interest in the idea of neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. It is a natural process for the brain to adapt to the tools we use and rely on.

I’ve used AI to summarize readings but never to form an opinion or do my research for me. I prefer it this way, so I can hold on to critical thinking, having creativity when it comes to developing an argument or questions for a research project. I write all my notes with pen and paper so I’ve never had to resort to it for note taking either. 

I don’t necessarily try to avoid it, but I don’t go out of my way to use it either. 

This taps into my philosophy of the issue as well. If I begin to overly rely on these technological advancements, it begins to feel as though I’m alienating my curiosity and joy of learning.

There are benefits to using AI, but there are major real life consequences to it too.

The University Daily Kansan has written countless articles on the topic, ranging from news and opinion. To be exact we’ve had four stories written since 2023. 

In Aidan Hanks’ piece he discusses using AI as a tool to entertain, learn and brainstorm with. Olivia Roderick’s piece argues for the idea of normalizing AI, and Ben Hooke rebutes those suggested ideas. Hooke also does a tremendous job explaining the effect AI has on the environment in his piece.

These articles show that artificial intelligence, despite being in its infancy, has become more commonplace

AI is only in its infancy. It hallucinates information and blatantly makes things up. It’s nowhere near as efficient as a human experienced in art, journalism and healthcare.  

So why is it taking jobs? It’s simple, the cost of AI is far cheaper than someone with experience. But there’s a counter to that. 

In the Kansan article by Ellie Fritz, she does a good job of quoting Alex Treaster, assistant professor of the practice within the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at KU.

Jobs that require real human ingenuity aren’t the ones at risk, and I would go as far to argue neither are manual or repetitive jobs. 

Automation is certainly an element that people are fearful of because of the outsourcing it makes.

This isn’t limited to just corporations, but real human interactions feel outsourced to computers.

Certainly this isn’t to say that I can’t learn a new perspective on an issue, but we shouldn’t turn to these extremes when we have fellow peers who might share the same questions, insights and experience. 

It doesn’t hurt to also ask professors for the help necessary. I understand it though, sometimes we have to crank out those late nights where you know your professor won’t be responding to emails. 

For now, AI isn’t replacing the vital healthcare workers, lawyers, or other jobs that, as mentioned, require human ingenuity. They could be replacing repetitive jobs, but they aren’t efficient or perfect. 

Because it’s in its infancy, all it can do now is maybe augment or enhance human capabilities, but that is still yet to be seen.

The integration of AI in our lives will continue to grow as it continues to evolve. It’s a tool that has attached itself to other tools; there’s just no avoiding it. 

Yadi Soto-Rocha is a fourth-year student studying psychology and minoring in journalism. He primarily writes news relating to political organizations with the occasional student opinion. He has been an opinion writer for the Kansan since fall 2023.