For this month's recommended reading, enjoy this round up of significant publications & studies from the last several weeks that shed light onto AI and its impacts on higher education & society at large.

  • How to Grapple with the AI Already on Your Campus - Marc Watkins, The Chronicle of Higher Education
    • Although we don't have any campus-wide AI technologies, it doesn't mean you aren't faced with AI in the kinds of tools you use all the time! This article outlines three steps any faculty member can take to understand which AI features are now embedded in the applications they use every day.
  • Artificial Intelligence & Academic Professions Report - AAUP
    • Findings from a survey of 500 higher education faculty, staff, and scholars indicate five key concerns, including improving professional development, demanding transparency and the ability to opt out, and job & wage protection. This report delves deeper into these concerns, along with recommendations for solutions that faculty can work to implement on their campuses. 
  • How Are Students Really Using AI? – Derek O'Connell, The Chronicle of Higher Education
    • This essay is full of interesting statistics and case studies that help “form a clearer picture about who is using AI, what they are using it for, what they think about it, and what it means for learning.”
  • Scientist Says That ChatGPT Has a “Staggering” Gender Problem - Noor Al-Sibai, Futurism
    • According to various studies, women appear to be adopting generative AI at a much lower rate than men. Although the article is primarily focused on a workplace survey, it does reference a study of students that supports this same gender split. 
  • Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task - Cornell University
    • This experiment involved recording the brain activity of three groups of participants as they wrote essays: one group could use an LLM, another could use search engines, one had no access to additional tools. Ultimately, researchers found significant differences in brain connectivity (an indicator of critical thinking), where those who wrote the essay without any tools had the strongest levels and the LLM users underperformed.