Professors are not the only ones concerned about the use of AII among students. I have noticed a bit of a disturbing trend, and I am not sure there is a way we can turn things back around.

There is no doubt that most college students use AI in their daily academic work. Many, like me, sometimes rely on grammar checks to notice those pesky mistakes that we often make.

A study done by Psychology Today showed that 86 percent of students use AI in their studies, with 54 percent using it weekly. While this number does not constitute evidence of the misuse of AI, it certainly offers an insight into AI trends.

However, the longer I have been in college, the more I see that many people are hypocritical when it comes to AI use.

Often, I will hear my peers discuss how they themselves feel irritation with people who rely on AI to write their papers and complete other assignments for them. Many do it for a multitude of reasons: academic burnout, lack of time, or simply not wanting to sit down and complete the assignment; there is no single reason that students use AI for their work.

Students, however, seem to have formed some sort of morality list of what assignments are acceptable to use AI for. Most tend to agree that relying on AI to author your paper is unacceptable but find using it to do a lab report to be a justifiable use because of the assignment’s annoyance. However, you cannot critique one use in school and then accept another similar use.

Academic integrity seems to be where most concerns about AI use end, however.

Many social media trends among Gen-Z revolve around using AI. One of those trends is simply creating something so ridiculous that it does not exist outside the realms of AI’s creations. An example of this is the Polaroid trend, where people generate themselves posing with someone that might otherwise be impossible to get a photo with.

While my peers may not be particularly involved in this specific trend, I still notice other uses.

Open any social media website, and I guarantee you that at least one of the people you follow has posted some sort of AI-generated content, either created by them or something that they found online.

Clubs that I am a part of will often use AI to generate flyers for events, despite how easily accessible it is to create one yourself with any electronic device.

These ‘simple’ requests of AI have a cost. Chatbots require massive amounts of power to respond to users and must use water to keep the servers cool.

In 2022, the Food and Water Watch recorded that Google, Microsoft, and Meta used 580 billion gallons of water to power and cool servers, enough to meet the needs of 15 million households. To generate a 100-word email, AI sites like ChatGPT use 519 milliliters of water, according to The Washington Post. AI also uses immense amounts of energy.

ChatGPT searches use nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search, and creating images can use as much energy as it takes to charge your phone.

So, it is interesting to hear people complain about climate change while actively taking part in one of its main contributors.

While we should not expect that students will stop relying on AI to create for them, it is important that they understand the consequences of this reliance. AI. can, without a doubt, be a boost to creation, but it should never become creation itself.