College students using AI are worried their skills could stagnate. Some feel guilty about heavy use.

• BI talked to more than a dozen college students to see how they're using AI to manage their coursework.
• Despite the ever-increasing prevalence and power of AI, some students said they were wary of using the tech.
• Others reported heavy use and worried or over-reliance and skill atrophy.

College students are using AI to help them lighten their course loads — but the process isn't always guilt-free.

Business Insider talked with over a dozen students about their AI use for schoolwork, and the conversations revealed a range of feelings amid educators' complaints of a wave of AI plagiarism.

Whether they were light or heavy users, the students seemed to grapple with the tradeoffs of using the technology.

Many told BI they felt a level of discomfort or suspicion — and some said they tried to avoid using it altogether.

"Honestly, I try to avoid it as much as possible. I don't really trust it," said Ellis Edgeman, an accounting major at Florida State University. "Having to fact-check everything that AI puts out, and then also having to reword everything so that it doesn't detect AI. It just seems like more work than just doing the assignment."

Fears of hallucination aside, other students are wary of over-reliance on AI and its potential for far-reaching consequences.

"It scares me to go all in because then I feel like my skills and my development, personally, professionally, will just kind of stagnate," said Michael, a computer science major at the University of Miami. "And once you kind of get stuck into that, it's hard to get out."

Michael, who requested to go by his first name to avoid potential academic consequences, said he grapples with feeling guilty about depending on a technology that could one day eliminate the possibility of a future career in programming.

Still, he said he like almost everyone he knows, relies on AI — it's just a question of how much.

"The longer the semester goes, the more burned out you get, the easier it is to fall into that trap," Michael said. "But I think almost everybody uses it to some extent."

Some students are using AI to streamline what they call 'busywork'

Of those who do lean on AI to help complete their schoolwork, many said they avoid allowing it to complete entire assignments for them, and instead use it to cut through "busywork."

Nicole Rivera-Reyes, a senior legal studies major at the University of Central Florida, said she avoids ChatGPT but relies heavily on Google's NotebookLM, particularly to help her transcribe videos and take notes.

"I think at the most, it should be used to streamline a task, not completely do it over," Rivera-Reyes said. "Instead of like — I understand the human element as far as error goes, right, but at most, I think it should be used to get through whatever busywork you have."

Samantha Wilson, a music education major at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, said she avoids AI altogether because she's "terrified" of getting flagged for plagiarism. For her peers who do dare, Wilson said it's just a matter of sorting out the work that they find valuable, or critical to the learning process.

"I've had classmates tell me that they use it for everything," Wilson said. "But I think that they're just utilizing the tool because they feel like the essay is a waste of their time. They already know the material, and they'd be fine not getting that experience of writing the paper."

Others are turning to AI to cope with what they describe as overwhelming course loads

A health sciences major and a musical theater student are both wrapping up their final years at the University of Miami. Both, who requested anonymity to avoid academic consequences, said they're relatively heavy AI users and cited similar reasons — heavy loads and teachers who moved faster than they felt they could keep up with.

"I had a teacher who was moving incredibly fast, and I barely even understood any of the concepts, and at that point, it was just like I needed to get a good grade," the musical theater student told BI. "AI broke down the concepts in a way that made it easier to understand for me than the actual teacher."

The theater student said the process felt mercenary, like she was "just checking a box," but that balancing her stacked schedule would become impossible without AI to clear quick tasks off her plate.

"I have my classes, on top of a show that I produce, on top of work hours, on top of potentially designing for another show," she said. "I do not have time. If I couldn't get through my homework quickly, I don't know what I would do. I already struggle enough to take care of myself in the busiest times."

The health sciences major, who said she used AI to get through a physics course in a similar fashion, said the tool is vital in freeing up her time — not just for social needs but for self-care.

"The time I get back by using AI, I honestly just use to shower and sleep. In sophomore year before I used any AI — it's so bad, but I used to have like zero food," she said. "Now I'm actually able to take care of basic human needs."

Students turning to AI to bail them out isn't unique to a single university. An architectural engineering student at Farmingdale State College in New York said he depended on it to save his grade in a challenging statics course.

The student, who requested anonymity given his use of AI, felt his entire class had fallen behind by the end of the semester. He said it prompted an incident of covert cheating — during a final conducted on university grounds, the student described a group effort to source and share answers to test questions.

"None of us were retaining any information," he added. "So, what we did was sort of like a group chat where half of us used Chegg and the other half used ChatGPT, and we shared answers for the test."

Some students fear the consequences of long-term reliance

Several students told BI that they worried that, for all its time-saving and revision benefits, using AI would come at a critical cost — skill atrophy.

Riley, a computer science major at the University of Florida who requested to go by his first name, said he's already seeing the effects of long-term AI usage.

"I will be the first one to tell you I've struggled with that before," Riley said. "With using AI for something and then going back to it, like, a month later, and being like, 'Oh, I don't remember what this does, or I don't remember how I did this.'"

A paper released by researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University suggested that the more workers relied on AI to automate tedious tasks, the more detached from the output they became.

"Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving," the researchers wrote.

The researchers added that data showed a "shift in cognitive effort" as knowledge workers moved from completing tasks themselves to overseeing the completion of tasks by generative AI.

When used "improperly," the researchers asserted that technologies could mean the "deterioration of cognitive faculties."

"A key irony of automation is that by mechanizing routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgment and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise," they wrote.

It's up to the individual, said Patrick Wilson, an anthropology student at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, to bridle the tech in a way that works for them.

"It's such an incredibly useful tool, it's really hard to just dismiss it based over that one concern," he said. "It's kind of on us to make sure that we're still being critical, and maintaining our abilities. But if I think, if you're using it well, if you're really using it to its full potential, then, by definition, you're doing a lot of critical thinking."

John Keon, who studies finance at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, said that AI is a natural next step in technological evolution and that the further automation of human tasks seems inevitable.

"You don't want to be reliant on this stuff, but at the same time, isn't that kind of like, what technologies, like — sort of the general idea is, it's designed to improve and handle functions that otherwise would take, you know, manpower or horsepower, or labor hours," he said.

Still, Keon distinguishes between academic and professional settings. He said that a boost from AI might be a good thing when you're in the work force, but that automating your work while still in university could prove detrimental.

"From a productivity standpoint, if you're in a company, then, yeah, that's a great thing," Keon said. "But if you're in an academic setting, if you're in a creative setting, I think that boredom and that brainstorm is a very crucial part of any kind of idea-generating creativity."