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The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
It’s a nondescript weekday morning. You roll over, vaguely and resistantly acknowledging your alarm. You almost resolve to snooze it when the glare of your MicroFridge microwave’s clock beams into your eye. To your horror, it is 9:10 a.m. on Wednesday, and you have an attendance-mandatory, discussion-based and non-major block class in thirty minutes. Begrudgingly deciding that maybe academic excellence is fulfilling, you resolve to go.
This undoubtedly brings you dread, but 30 minutes is a while. Yet, when the sun hits your eye from the corner of your shut blinds, it dawns on you: you are your group’s discussion leader today, this discussion counts for 15 percent of your grade in the course, and you have not done the reading for it.
Suddenly, thirty minutes feels tantamount to zero. Panicked, your brain thinks back to a TikTok you saw somewhere between 2 and 3 a.m. last night — an AI tool that summarizes your readings for you. You initially feel a little guilty about using AI this way, but at this point, it’s 9:23 a.m.Â
While your discussion went over fine, you may have been right to feel guilty.Â
AI is an extraordinary issue. ChatGPT and wannabe follow-ups dominate much of the cultural conversation, largely due to the public’s misconceptions and lack of knowledge. This leads to much-justified collective worry, ranging from fears of AI-job takeover to prepping for imminent societal collapse.Â
Adding to the fluster, onslaughts of new AI technology seem to be introduced every time we reload our feeds. Among them, AI-generated images, deepfake videos and AI-powered study tools stand out. The former two seem the most apparently dangerous and primed for wrongdoing. Maybe they are, but this should not relegate AI-powered study tools — namely, text summarizers — to the safety of underestimation.Â
While the worries above are important, as students, an equally pertinent — yet relatively unconsidered — question is whether our brains take a dangerous secondary role when we utilize AI to summarize content for us. I think they do, and to an extent that is not reflected in our consideration.
If you have ever found yourself in the situation at the beginning of this piece, you have likely justified your use of AI as a practical means to an inconsequential end. There is something to be said for this practicality; life as a college student — especially post-election for many — is difficult: 58 percent of students on U.S. college campuses report moderate to severe levels of depression. Leaning on convenient tools such as Unriddle AI feels, perhaps appropriately, insignificant in the face of this. However, pivoting to more self-reliance may be the key to solving the mental health conditions that could lead to this AI-powered shortcutting.
My lived experience — and psychological research — suggest that a sense of accomplishment and productivity is invaluable to improving mental health conditions. This is rendered impossible when we turn over the workload to a machine. Further, it builds resilience and mental fortitude to be the sole party finishing a task like reading a text. You also leave the labor with a distilled message imparted to you by the author, a holistic experience AI cannot replicate in a few bullet points.
The permissibility of this variant of AI is also kind of an elephant in a nondescript room.  American University policy for AI is vague and falls short of descriptively accounting for AI’s rapid development and new applications. In the face of this ambiguity, it may benefit students to err on the side of caution regardless.Â
If you have felt yourself described at any point, consider this: AI cannot replicate a sense of accomplishment. Rather, it can abridge your chances of obtaining it. Be thoughtful about how you use AI resources in general, and consider the possibilities that may lie within something as seemingly trivial as a class reading.Â
Harry Walton is a freshman in the School of Public Affairs and a columnist for The Eagle.
This article was edited by Quinn Volpe, Alana Parker and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Hannah Langenfeld.