AI wants to fu*k college students

It's bad. Really, really bad.

By Liv Martin

Guest contributor to the Truth OC

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AI wants to fuck college students.

But not the way you think …

While everyone panics about AI messing with the job market, the job market will not be the primary way AI fucks with college students. I know, I know … but worse things are actually coming for us.

As a college student currently in the thick of finals, I see AI harming my fellow college students in several ways that will harm their career prospects outside of an AI agent taking all the jobs. Aside from environmental destruction, unlawful surveillance, and outright theft from artists and writers. As a side note, let it be known, readers, I have never used any of the free LLMs (Large Language Models) apart from Google Search trying to foist it on me without my consent. And yes, people ask “don’t you want to keep up with the times? This is the future.”

BUT!

The main issue facing college students is that AI is making them stupid. I’m not joking, the cognitive atrophy is real. Also, AI is harming the education system itself and eroding trust and connection between professors and students.

Literacy is more than just being able to understand words—it’s the ability to understand nuance, irony, satire, entendre, and even reading a room. When AI summarizes, whether for a research article or a novel, it takes over the student’s thinking for them and degrades their literacy skills.

This is scary because half of college learning is reading articles and writing papers to show your understanding of course materials and original thinking. Group projects are even more tortuous when you have to read literally thoughtless writing from a teammate because they used AI to read the book for them and write their part of the paper.

Some of these students may actually finish college knowing less than when they were admitted because their brains are leaking out their ears with every LLM summary or hallucinated analysis and un-researched paper reference.

They’re even using AI to write and respond to posts in online class discussions. Thanks for the feedback, Chad, but I don’t really care what Grok thinks about the child development class readings.

Truthfully, I find it terrifying.

Then there’s the fracturing of trust between students and teachers. We now have lockdown browser tests with webcams, long “check-in” assignments to ensure students are following along, and essay authorship scans (ironically AI powered and producing so many false accusations). Teachers constantly doubting and searching for the slightest hint of AI, and the students who actually do the work trying to desperately prove their innocence.

It’s a weird combination of 1984’s Big Brother and The Giver’s creepy banality that’s positioning professors who are supposed to guide us as our keepers and adversaries.

AI is creating a future where some college graduates will enter the workforce truly unprepared and, despite the predictions that only those who know how to use AI will have the advantage, will be utterly unable to actually do the work.

Despite the hype, the future will belong to those who can function without AI and still be able to think for themselves, read, learn, and understand complexity. But the rich guys selling AI, and the CEOs gleefully planning to replace workers with bots, really just want us college students to be fucked.

Liv Martin mostly studies psychology at a local university. On occasion, she indulges her passion for writing with short stories, articles and lively online debates. You can follow her on Instagram here.