On July fifteenth, we received an email from the University of Minnesota’s Office of Information Technology with the subject line “Introducing Google Gemini: Your AI Partner,” announcing that the University has made Google’s generative AI tool Gemini available to students, faculty and staff. The tool is to be used for summarizing information, answering questions and brainstorming ideas, among other uses.

As University students and teaching assistants, we find the University’s decision to promote generative AI to be disrespectful and self-destructive. The email states that generative AI is “designed to enhance your creativity and decision-making, not replace it.” 

This reasoning is disingenuous. 

Regardless of the stated purpose, generative AI inevitably replaces the critical thinking skills the University claims to be teaching.

First and foremost, we come to the University as students eager to learn. Promoting student use of generative AI takes away the vital process of struggling to grasp a new concept and encourages students to focus only on the product and the associated grade, often at the expense of academic integrity. AI is contributing to a broader trend of conditioning students to care exclusively about grades rather than to prepare to be engaged members of their communities and learn for the sake of learning.

Much of the value of studying at a university comes from learning in a community, but AI erodes this culture of learning. When students use generative AI, they generally do not understand the material as well as their peers who took the time to digest the material. Students who take the time to learn course material in detail thus suffer, because generative AI deprives them of peers who undertook the same struggle of learning for themselves. 

As teaching assistants in both the humanities and the sciences, we are too often forced to take on the role of AI investigator when grading written work. We must constantly be on the lookout for material that suggests the use of AI, rather than focusing on students’ arguments and scientific literacy. 

We often do not know whether we are giving feedback to students or to large language models. Even for low-stakes assignments, such as short reflections asking students to connect course material to their lived experiences, we have suspected the use of AI. 

The first guiding principle of the University’s Student Conduct Code states that “the University seeks an environment that promotes academic achievement and integrity, that is protective of free inquiry, and that serves the educational mission of the University.” 

There is a deep irony in the University claiming to promote academic integrity while offering students a tool that allows them to sidestep accountability to their education and their University community. ChatGPT user statistics show usage plummeted in June when most schools were out of session and skyrocketed in recent weeks as students returned to the classroom.

Embracing generative AI helps turn our University degrees into nearly $75,000, or more of empty credentials. Especially in the context of the recent 7% cut to academic programs and 6.5% increase in tuition shouldered by students, the University should not be funneling more of its resources toward Google.

This is not to mention the way AI plagiarizes original work or its disastrous environmental impacts, including intensive electricity use and water consumption. Why do we want our university to contribute to these issues?

The sanctioned use of Gemini by the IT department and the University undermines the larger goal of our education. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. 

The University claims to only “enhance” our education by promoting the use of Gemini. But how can we tell the difference between the enhancement of our creativity and its destruction? 

The University should regulate the use of generative AI, not promote it. Our education is at stake.

Emma Bourne is a senior in the College of Biological Sciences, studying plant and microbial biology, and an alumna of Deep Springs College.

Martha Denton is a senior in the College of Liberal Arts studying geography and Spanish & Portuguese studies.