OPINION: Will the new students' use of AI become Academic Intelligence or Alarming Incompetence?

This is an opinion piece; the views expressed in the column are the writer’s own. 

It's the start of the semester. The many new students now embarking on university life are entering a new reality: many who used AI in upper secondary school are now faced with more on-site exams and oral exams. Aarhus University owes it to new generations of students to clarify how AI should not be used in learning, as this is a challenge that upper secondary schools have been unable to meet. The losers will be the new students. 

But how do the new students actually use AI? The answer can be found in a report from the Danish Evaluation Institute, 'Students' use of AI in upper secondary school' (In Danish, ed.), which was released last year. The report showed several trends: 

• On average, upper secondary students felt that copying up to a quarter of an assignment (without making any subsequent editing) should not be considered cheating.
• 2/3 reported using AI to cheat on assignments.
• 9/10 reported using AI to cheat on group work.
• Only 7 per cent said they avoided using AI because they feared being caught cheating. 

But what do the students themselves have to say about their use of AI? The report describes how students feel lazy and dependent on AI, lose their creativity and find it harder to engage deeply with written texts. 

It is contagious

The practice now making its way into universities as new cohorts arrive is one in which students' skills are effectively buried in a data centre. Remarkably, many students are worried that their use of AI is undermining their learning, yet they nevertheless feel compelled to keep using it. The compulsion arises from the invisible pressure that lies in the assumption that everyone else is also using AI. 

It is clear that AI is not experienced as an open or transparent social practice among new students. Instead, they assume that everyone else is using it and that they will be left behind unless they too plunge headlong into data-centre dependency. Thus, FOMO is driving the use of AI. 

That said, AI is undeniably a field in constant development. This is also a familiar excuse used by those who shy away from helping new students by clearly explaining how AI cannot be used to improve learning. We do not yet know how to use AI responsibly. What we do already know, however, is how harmful it can be, so why not say so?

Presumably because the answer is every bit as dull as the usual advice about diet and exercise: Write for yourself, read for yourself, think for yourself. 
The institutions tasked with supporting the cohorts that make up Denmark’s grand AI experiment can all too easily assume that new students are the ones who know the most about AI.  Of all the mistakes, this is the biggest. Because the report shows that this misguided, harmful, and intellectually stunting use of AI is, in fact, overwhelmingly prevalent among the generations of students now making their way into higher education.

It is the university's responsibility

So why should the university take responsibility? What about the upper secondary schools? What about the ministries? 

The answer is simple: If AI is to be used responsibly tomorrow, we need to help students today - and we should have started yesterday. And once upper secondary students become university students, that responsibility rests with the university. 

But what, exactly, should the university do? Some obvious first steps could include: 

• That all philosophy of science courses should include critical engagement with AI.
• That written assignments should include a discussion of AI use in the methodology section, requiring students to explain which tool they used, why they used it, and how they used it, thereby providing an academic justification for its use.
• That all introductory courses across every degree programme should explicitly discourage the prevailing use of AI, so that new cohorts can unlearn the bad habits they acquired at upper secondary school. 

Intelligence or incompetence?

For this to succeed, AU must be willing to take a clear stance on how AI ought not to be used. The university should simply take the position that the way upper secondary students currently use AI is not merely bad, but actively counterproductive to the development of academic knowledge and skills. 

In the meantime, we can each reflect on the same question that the universities need to answer: will AI lead to Academic Intelligence or Alarming Incompetence in the years to come? 

Jens Vase is a medical student, a member of the Student Council, and a student representative on Aarhus University’s board. Jens Vase is also a student representative on Omnibus' editorial committee.  

This text is machine translated and post-edited by Mie Skov Jeppesen.