A study by the UNC-Chapel Hill Mental Health Task Force in 2019 found that over 90 percent of UNC undergraduates reported feeling overwhelmed. Sixty percent of these reported having overwhelming feelings of anxiety. Using the information highlighted in this study and guidelines provided by the National Institutes of Health, it can be derived that most UNC students have, at one point or another, qualified for what is scientifically known as “burnout.”
Every college student will likely feel some sense of burnout in their four years, but in the case of our University, this burnout persists rather than fades away. From semester to semester, nothing changes for Chapel Hill students: never-ending assignments, midterms and finals weighted three times as much as anything else in the class, a culture of double majors or double minors, master’s and doctorate degrees — it's easy to feel that stress is incessant.
This leads students to wonder how they can save themselves from the torment that is to be a well-educated and dignified UNC student. The most prevalent answer? Generative AI.
From 2019, the year of the Mental Health Task Force study, to now, the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT have increased drastically, with some studies reporting that almost all students at some point in their college career will use AI at least once.
UNC has tried to balance this new tool within the limits and regulations of academia, but the result seems to be the same. College students do not seem to care about the implications generative AI tools may have on their education.
To this majority feeling anxiety and burnout, AI has been a savior allowing them to tackle their education with new reinvigorated energy. However, I might suggest that AI has been an academic Lucifer in disguise.
In an ongoing study of 505 Chinese university students, it has been found that the excessive use of ChatGPT and other AI tools led to diminished critical thinking skills, less engagement with course material and, you guessed it, increased feelings of burnout.
This idea, while formalized, is not exactly new to us. Everyone’s had times when they were behind in class and needed a quick study guide or had a long reading due in an hour and only really needed the main points. It has become so much a manner of life that many students would rather figure out a way to have ChatGPT read a PDF than read it themselves.
You might begin to ask yourself what the point of ever doing your work is if AI can do it all for you. Then you find that the more you use generative AI, the less it becomes a fallback when you forgot to do your assignment due in an hour. You might find yourself “getting ahead” by simply having AI take all your notes for you. Eventually you might cease to do any homework at all, and by this point, even the easy things have become much harder.
