Last year, California State University signed a $17 million deal with OpenAI to provide its over half a million students and faculty with ChatGPT Edu, an education-focused version of the company\u2019s flagship chatbot. It was a statement move for both parties: OpenAI clinched the largest public university system in the country, and CSU secured bragging rights for being pioneering adopters of the latest revolutionary tech. This was the big stage for AI\u2019s dazzling promises of supercharged learning to shine on.<\/p>\n
CSU students, however, have come to see the tech differently. Around 65 percent of them \u2014 and 59 percent of faculty there \u2014 are skeptical that AI has been benefitting education overall, according to a recent university-wide survey<\/a> with over 94,000 respondents. A full 80 percent of students said they wouldn\u2019t be comfortable turning in AI-generated work as their own. And around four out of five of them were worried about various AI issues, including its impact on jobs, creativity, and the environment.<\/p>\n If part of the intent behind the collaboration was to win new AI converts, it hasn\u2019t quite worked out that way.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re ethically opposed to the environmental impacts and the bias and the erasure of their jobs and voices and creativity,\u201d CSU English professor Jennifer Trainor told NPR<\/a>. \u201c[They] don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n The ambivalent student sentiment is especially striking when you consider how widespread AI use on campus has become. In the survey, 84 percent of students said they used ChatGPT, and 64 percent said AI positively affected their learning. Roughly half used AI regularly.<\/p>\n But even as they\u2019re heavily encouraged by their institution to use AI \u2014 not to mention bombarbed by all the noise coming out of the AI industry itself \u2014 students can\u2019t shake off some deep-seated reservations about the tech. Some are completely opposed, with Trainor describing that there was a \u201cgroundswelling of resistance\u201d to AI on the campus. Taking aim at the school\u2019s administration, one student vented to NPR that she was a \u201clittle disappointed that they accepted [AI] with open arms immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s more than a hint of optics, instead of merely education value, being a major factor behind the ChatGPT deal. University leaders called a potential OpenAI partnership a \u201chuge branding opp[ortunity]\u201d in an internal planning document obtained by NPR. At a press conference announcing the partnership, CSU chancellor Mildred Garc\u00eda bragged that \u201cno other university system in the US or internationally is doing anything like this, not at this scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, there\u2019s good reason to be cautious around AI as an educational tool<\/a> and not treat hundreds of thousands of students as a big tech experiment. The long-term effects of AI on mental health and learning\u00a0are still unknown. But a burgeoning body of evidence has associated AI usage with impaired critical thinking<\/a> skills, memory loss<\/a>, lower brain activity during cognitive tasks<\/a>, and other deleterious cognitive effects. That\u2019s not to mention the temptation it brings as an effortless cheating tool.<\/p>\n CSU faculty are just as ambivalent as students. About 52 percent of professors and instructors said that AI had negatively affected their teaching, and 40 percent said they either discourage or outright forbid AI in the classroom. Some hope for campus-wide reform. Martha Kenney, a professor and science and technology scholar, led a petition<\/a> demanding CSU not renew its contract with OpenAI.<\/p>\n \u201cI think refusing this technology needs to be a position that\u2019s on the table,\u201d Kenney told NPR.<\/p>\n CSU renewed its contract<\/a> with OpenAI this month, agreeing to pay $13 million a year for the next three years. The decision was made despite the university facing steep budget cuts<\/a> that could slash $144 million.<\/p>\n