Officials at the University of South Carolina have described the US$1.5 million (S$1.9 million) partnership it signed in summer 2025 with OpenAI as a path towards smarter research, better time management and around-the-clock learning support.
Undergrad Brooklyn Tyner sees it another way. “We’re not excited to see these advancements in AI if it means it’s going to pollute our environment, spread misinformation, track us and take our jobs,” said Ms Tyner, 20, who calls OpenAI’s ChatGPT a “cheating machine”.
When the university organised its first-ever “AI Day” to bring leaders in artificial intelligence from Microsoft and Gartner to campus, she set up a booth with a big whiteboard and asked each passer-by whether they approved of the OpenAI partnership.
By a margin of nine-to-one, she said, those who stopped to cast their vote with a dry-erase marker said they did not. “The people who decide we’re going to give this much money to ChatGPT are not the people who interact with students every day,” she said.
OpenAI and rival Anthropic have zeroed in on college campuses as a valuable source of future users, competing for market share through deals with schools and even paying student influencers to start campus clubs. Employers are increasingly vetting new hires for AI fluency, making adoption less a matter of personal choice and more a precondition for employment. Many professors have responded by wedging AI into their curricula.
“We would be doing students a grave disservice if we weren’t actively seeking ways to responsibly integrate AI tools into our curriculum,” said Mr Jeff Stensland, a spokesman for the University of South Carolina. “Almost every industry will be impacted by this technology in some way, and employers are increasingly demanding a workforce that is proficient in using and understanding these tools.”
But the changes are triggering a backlash among students concerned about the emerging technology’s effects on both their education and society writ large, prompting anti-AI marches, op-eds, petitions, new clubs and performance art on campuses across the country.
“People are losing the ability to critically think,” said Ms Cassidy Rexroad, a junior at the University of Indianapolis who organised a protest against her school’s AI Summit in April.
Demonstrations such as Ms Rexroad’s – which drew about 100 people – have not yet reached the scale of recent campus protests against the war in Gaza, climate change and other issues. But sentiment around the technology has started to deteriorate among Gen Zs. The unique threat AI poses to students’ education and their hopes of finding jobs after graduation has made universities an epicentre for anti-AI resistance.
“I think people assume we just want to get the degree and get out,” Ms Rexroad, 21, said. “Doing the work for yourself has value. Having the human connection has value.”
One student group founded before the rise of ChatGPT has taken up the anti-AI mantle. The so-called Luddite Club, named after a 19th-century labour movement that saw textile workers destroy machinery they thought would displace them, was originally formed during the Covid-19 lockdowns to encourage students to shun smartphones and other modern technology in favour of in-person interaction.
Now, with more than 30 chapters in the US, its meetings offer a whimsical outlet for a tech-weary generation that resents being forced to accept yet another paradigm shift they see as far more focused on private companies’ profits than on their well-being.
“AI gets people out on the street and out to the Luddite Clubs,” said Ms Jasper Dabbs, 21, an organiser for the Columbia University chapter. She spoke outside the school’s imposing gates, where the Luddites and other student activists had gathered for an anti-AI demonstration. Riffing on classic folk songs with lines such as “I’m gonna lay down my chatbot”, the students demanded that the university scrap its new AI degree programmes and cancel deals that granted premium access to ChatGPT and other AI models.
Asked for comment about the AI pushback, Ms Samantha Slater, a spokeswoman for Columbia University, wrote in an e-mail that the school “welcomes students expressing a wide range of views on artificial intelligence. We are preparing students not only to develop and deploy AI technologies, but also to critically examine their societal implications and help shape their responsible governance and use”.
As universities rush to implement AI, they get some of the most heated pushback when they apply it to the arts. From image generators such as OpenAI’s Dall-E to video tools like Alphabet’s Veo, the AI-generated content students refer to as “slop” feels like an existential threat to many pursuing a career in the arts, whether it is graphic design, acting or cinematography.
At the elite Berklee College of Music in Boston, students have signed petitions and put up posters protesting against an elective course called “Bots and Beats”, which teaches AI-generated music-making. The class’ professor Ben Camp is an adviser for the AI music start-up Suno, according to his LinkedIn profile. He did not respond to a request for comment.
“If most students don’t want to use generative AI, then Berklee shouldn’t represent generative AI,” said junior Dan Sienko, adding that they believed generative AI violates the school’s own anti-plagiarism policies.
In response to students’ concerns, Berklee set up a town hall in April with Mr Rodney Alejandro, a music industry veteran and dean of the professional writing and music technology department. But students said they were prevented from speaking for more than a minute at a time until a professor raised his hand to object. “I don’t feel that they’re truly interested in hearing us out,” said Ms Andrea Recalde, a senior. “It’s like talking to a wall.”
Mr Alejandro said the songwriting department created the class in response to demand from students and that he considers it a fulfilment of Berklee’s obligation to prepare them for the real world. “We’re pro-artists,” he said. “We want to make sure students are equipped with the best skill set to navigate their careers.”
Yet many students share the feeling that universities are denying them a say in the future of their own education – and worry their schools’ AI policies are already coming with very real trade-offs. Grand Valley State University in Michigan announced in February that it would issue US$139 million in bonds to fund a technology hub in downtown Grand Rapids.
In March, the university slashed retirement healthcare benefits for professors and laid off staff from its art museum and tutoring centre. The school, which did not reply to a request for comment, has not connected the two events, but students said they appear related.
With help from their professor, one environmental science class staged a walkout to protest against the school’s AI policies and their impact on the environment. Ms Lindsay Stankus, one of the organisers, said one particular moment crystallised her opposition: when her photography professor asked the class to use AI to generate an image of what earth would look like after humans.
With fears mounting that the enormous amounts of energy demanded by AI infrastructure could hasten the planet’s descent into climate disaster, the assignment hit a little too close to home. “I refused to do it,” she said. BLOOMBERG
Source : https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/why-many-american-college-kids-dont-want-ai
