Given the prevalence of AI in college since ChatGPT and generative AI emerged at the end of 2022, I had my students in “Introduction to Literary Studies” (ENGL 310) read three articles on AI and the decline in reading levels during the first week of classes, after which they wrote short reflections on whether AI was more harmful or beneficial for their major and fields (most of them are English or Secondary English Education majors).
I am sharing their insights in this blog post. Here are the articles they read for class and that we discussed before they wrote their short reflections:
- “AI is making reading books feel obsolete” (The Conversation)
- “ChatGPT may be eroding critical thinking skills” (Time)
- “Thinking is becoming a luxury good” (New York Times)
— Anuja Madan, Associate Professor
Adelaide Sivits, Freshman, English major and Political Science on the Pre-Law Track: While majoring in English, the political science component of my studies compels me to consider the nature and impact of artificial intelligence from a different perspective than some of my peers. Artificial intelligence, or AI, has quickly flooded education, career work, and social interaction. This sudden saturation has made AI an ever-present aspect of our lives, introducing both short-term successes and long-term pitfalls.
Anecdotally, I cannot recall the first time I heard about generative intelligence, but rather the first time it became a component of my life. In my junior year of high school, I took AP English Language and Composition, a course focused on developing students’ writing abilities. My teacher assigned us a unique project regarding Open-AI’s highly successful ChatGPT: each student was to provide the GPT with a slightly different variation of the same essay prompt. We observed that each student ended up with a rhetorically weak essay, lush with surface level analysis and nearly identical thesis statements. This brought the following question into conversation, if any of us could call the essay ChatGPT created our “own work?” Given that the content was generated by Open-AI, the essay could be considered a work of plagiarism without proper citation to the generative AI used.
Yet, therein lies the moral and legal issue. Technically, if properly cited, the generated essays would be our own works; furthermore, because each student typed out the prompt that was used to generate the essay, one could argue that each student would have a copyright claim to their generated essay. Thaler v. Perlmutter, an appellate case from March of 2025, ruled that the Copyright Act “[requires all eligible works] to be authored in the first instance by a human being,” regarding AI copyright claims (Title 17, Chapter 2). This, however, does not specify whether or not the typing of the prompt may be considered the first authorship of a work. The accessibility of Open-AI products, social media platforms’ AI bots, and the generally saturated AI of the modern era, has presented us with moral and legal dilemmas. To name a few: is it acceptable to try copyrighting a generative product as one’s own work, how accessible should AI be to the public, how ethically are AI sources collecting information and training bots, and how can liability interact with this all when someone gets hurt by artificial intelligence? These questions reveal how unprepared our legal system is for the realities of AI creation. Until carefully tailored policies are developed, the public is unprotected— a concerning situation for officials committed to protecting the populace. Ultimately, the discretion of users and creators is key, but that can only go so far.
Eleanor Allen, Sophomore, English Literature major: Personally, I believe that within the study of literature and other humanities the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is most often a harmful practice for students. I have found that the generative AI used for AI summaries on Google frequently produces inaccurate information even regarding commonly known information, yet it is presented as factually correct. This has become the first point of reference when searching virtually anything on the internet, so students should be discerning when utilizing AI tools even when briefly searching for general information on a topic. Moreover, the study of literature is concerned with interpretation for which scholars have developed a multitude of methods, each leading to a deeper understanding of various aspects of human life. Because life, history, and culture are so nuanced, there is essentially no limit to the ways literature can be analyzed, interpreted, and applied to understanding the human condition. AI is obviously quite limited in the way it can understand information about the human experience, as it does not have any emotional capacity which is arguably the most quintessential characteristic of human nature. Thus, in using AI, a student is limiting themselves as well.
Kenna Mac Ewen, Junior, Humanities major: AI is harmful for humanities as it cannot understand the subtleties of human emotion and expression. AI has the bias of humans without the ability to question information it receives, to learn and grow through experience. For college education in general, it is also harmful to reviewing work, the process of writing and reading where contemplation happens. AI is a technology we have not adapted to yet, and it is used in most cases for goals such as getting good grades and not for the sake of learning. Though it saves time, it is at the cost of reflection.
Sydnee Jacobs, Junior, Secondary English Education major: I have seen the good and the bad when AI is involved. With the prompt to decide if AI is more beneficial or harmful, I choose harmful. Yes, it can help students struggling in certain classes, but it can also cause more trouble. AI writes papers, helps with homework, and has conversations with people at all hours. What most people forget about AI is how AI is not human. It basically cheats and uses other people’s words as its own. This could severely affect me since I will be an English teacher. I want people to use their own words and thoughts. AI is killing individuality. No one stands out when AI causes papers to sound the same. The thought of no new ideas scares me. How can our world grow when we repeat ourselves over and over again? AI, though a helpful tutor, ruins originality.
Nora Budke, Sophomore, Secondary English Education major: Artificial intelligence, specifically in English education, is more harmful than beneficial. Many students are completing assignments by relying solely on AI. While some students may only use AI to help, or as a “crutch,” the majority of school-aged people are lacking in originality, motivation, and work ethic. Using ChatGPT or other large language models harm students’ abilities to think for themselves and create new stories or opinions. AI lessens the need for critical thinking because it can feed users with ideas they didn’t have to come up with. Reading is occurring less often than it did in the past, and reading comprehension skills are rapidly declining as more and more students continue to discover how much easier their lives could be if they used AI.
Mary Flowers, Sophmore, Secondary English Education major: As someone who is a Secondary English Education Major, I feel that the increased use of AI is very harmful. English classes rely heavily on critical thinking and the understanding of written texts. People who use AI to summarize an article or book may miss important details that are essential to the deep understanding of the text’s meaning. I want my students to really dive deep into readings. Another issue comes in essay writing. People are using AI to not only pick a topic but write a whole essay for them. The article we read proves that doing this teaches them absolutely nothing. This whole thing is like the beginning of a dystopian novel: who needs teachers when kids can rely on AI?
Victoria Larson, Junior, English/Journalism Education and English major: I believe AI is more harmful for college than helpful, including within the English and education majors. It’s a slippery slope from just using AI to help you take notes to using it to plagiarize. Both my majors emphasize creativity and integrity, and the use of AI can quickly compromise these values if it is not employed with the intention of honesty. If someone does not truly value education and reading/writing, they likely would not use AI as only a helpful guide.
Saraeh Ransom, Freshman, Secondary English Education major: The use of AI is the biggest cause of cognitive inactivity within students. When AI is in use, many students’ own creative abilities are decreased, which is counterintuitive because those skills are the most human thing that we as individuals have. Our brains help us grow and continue the process of learning, yet with the convenience attached to a virtual “tool” such as AI, academic spaces are compromised and therefore defeat the purpose of education which is to help us grow in cognitive and intellectual abilities. So, as a future educator, AI will indeed be harmful in the long run, especially in classrooms. Artificial intelligence will lead to a less critically thinking society and the research we read shows that this is inevitable. If we as individuals don’t take the first step and use our human abilities and our creative tendencies, then what makes us human will be lost and we will become virtually brain-dead.
Noah Marquardt, Freshman, Secondary English Education major: In general for my major of Secondary Education, I would say AI is more harmful than good. As a teacher, I should be teaching students to think for themselves and if I use AI to do something for me, I would be breaking my own rule. I want to see my students do their own work and generally AI promotes anything but that. I acknowledge that it can be beneficial as a study aid or for generating ideas for assignments but in general I think it causes more harm than good.
Khalia Woods, Junior, Music Composition major: The main goal for music majors is to learn how music works in terms of theory and use that knowledge to compose pieces of music of various styles. AI is mainly harmful for music majors, because students should have their own creativity in their work. However, there are a few small benefits of using AI as a music major. For example, asking AI for the steps to constructing a 7th chord is helpful for new beginners in a music theory class. The simplicity of the instructions allows a student like me to figure out the basics of chord construction. Then it is up to the student to retain this information and apply the general knowledge learned for other aspects of music theory. But as a whole, AI is harmful for music majors because using AI as a resource for something music related can result in obtaining false information. Another reason AI is harmful for music majors is because it reduces a music students’ ability to develop their own voices. Say you give AI a piece of music and ask it to generate a voice recording of it for you, instead of using your own voice— not only would the recording probably produce a soulless sound, but the music student wouldn’t have the opportunity to develop their own voice over time.
Kelsey Phillips, Junior, Integrative Human Sciences major: I believe that AI is more harmful than beneficial for college education in the area of Integrative Human Sciences for many reasons. The primary one however is that AI is not a human being. IHS is a major that is centered around people: particularly their thoughts, feelings, and struggles. Therefore, the utilization of a tool that merely impersonates the human experience would not benefit students in deepening their understanding of humanity. Additionally, the world of human sciences contains endless complex problems. Since complex problems require adaptive solutions, it is imperative that students in the IHS field have the ability to think critically. Unfortunately, the use of the AI causes regression in those skills, as well as a lack of thoroughness.
K-State English 
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