AI: Students & Faculty Coming Around on AI Benefits. AI-RTZ #1170

One of the stranger features of this AI Tech Wave has been who resisted it hardest in its early years. The young.

Past tech waves were adopted youth first. PCs, the internet, smartphones, social. This one ran the other way.

I have written about this a few times. In April, Stanford’s AI Index numbers had US favorability on AI under 30%. The 18 to 29 cohort was souring fastest, down 12 points in a year.

In May, the surveys said regular folks wanted to slow AI down. And last fall I noted the pattern underneath: the resistance usually formed before people had tried the tools.

New data suggests that is now shifting. Right where you would expect it to shift first. On campus.

Axios reports in “College AI use spikes”, on a three year study from American University’s Kogod School of Business, tracking how business students actually use AI:

“The number of business students regularly using AI has increased from 6.2% to 29% over the past three years, according to research from American University’s Kogod School of Business… Students increasingly see AI as a critical job skill but want more guidance on using it responsibly.”

Nearly five times the regular users in three years.

And the use is not casual. Over 80% of college students used AI academically in the past six months. Nearly a third now use it 11 or more times a week for school or work tasks.

The job market is doing a lot of the pushing. The share of job interviews with AI-related questions jumped from 11.6% to 42.6% over the same three years.

So students now see AI as a job skill. They want guidance on AI, not distance.

And the schools have changed posture. Kogod’s interim dean, Casey Evans:

“We’ve accepted that this is something that students will use… We haven’t encountered a lot of resistance. We’re very intentional, as opposed to forcing AI on students with no choice… They are really using AI as one of many tools in their toolbox.”

Faculty moved from policing to coaching. From building AI-proof assignments to this:

“We’ll drop an assignment into AI and say, ‘What you just got back is a C. Now let’s talk about how you get to an A.’”

That is the calculator lesson playing out again. As I wrote two years ago, teaching adapts to the tool, and the feared harm mostly does not arrive.

Nor is it one survey.

Inside Higher Ed had 85% of students using generative AI for coursework in the past 12 months. Gallup had 57% of US college students using AI at least weekly this spring, and one in five daily.

The concerns have not vanished. And they are the right ones. About 40% of students worry AI is reducing their ability to think independently. Over half of Kogod students worry about academic integrity.

Worrying about your own thinking is itself independent thinking. And a demand for guidance is teachable. OpenAI saw that opening early with ChatGPT for Education.

My take. This is the shift I suggested was coming, as more mainstream folks got to try AI for themselves. The attitudes had formed before trial. Trial is now arriving at scale, class by class.

Students are treating AI as one more tool in the toolbox. Teachers are grading with the tools. Employers are asking about them in interviews.

The message is seeping in, ‘Try it, you’ll like it’.

More are trying it every semester. An impact of this AI Tech Wave worth tracking. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here.)