Beyond the Hype About Student Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Use

A recent online poll with my students shows they are both excited and scared about generative artificial intelligence (GAI). Their insights reveal how they are navigating an AI-powered future.

by Marvin Starominki-Uehara, PhD, August 1st, 2025

Picture this: you are sitting in a university classroom in 2025, and instead of reaching for Google when you hit a research roadblock, you are chatting with a GAI assistant that helps you brainstorm ideas, understand complex readings, and even translate foreign texts. This is not science fiction -- it is happening right now on campuses around the world (Tang et al. 2025).

I conducted an online poll (pol.is) with 15 students who attended my two courses (business & environmental sciences) at Temple University Japan this summer. The poll was conducted anonymously and designed to take less than two minutes (see results below). It sought to capture candid opinions through a mix of general and specific statements about GAI. The results reveal something fascinating about how my students feel about this breakthrough technology. And they paint a picture that is far more nuanced than the usual ‘the youth love technology’ narrative we often hear (ACT for Youth 2024).

Here is what surprised me most: nearly every student in the poll -- 92% to be exact -- said they are excited about using GAI for learning. But here is the twist: a third of those same enthusiastic students also admitted they are scared of it. This contradiction tells me something important about living through this technological revolution. My students are not blindly embracing GAI or rejecting it outright. Instead, they are wrestling with both its promise and its perils (Fayda-Kinik 2025) in remarkably mature ways.

The enthusiasm makes sense when you look at what GAI actually does for these students. They are using it like a Swiss Army knife for academic tasks. Need to understand a dense paper? GAI breaks it down. Stuck on a research topic? GAI suggests new angles. Working with texts in another language? GAI translates instantly. The most popular use? Research assistance, with 85% of my students finding GAI incredibly helpful for digging into topics and synthesizing information from multiple sources (Zhu et al. 2025).

But my summer students are not naïve about potential downsides. They worry about becoming lazy, losing their original voice, or letting AI do the thinking for them (Cengiz & Peker 2025). About a third expressed concern that GAI might actually hurt their cognitive development -- a surprisingly sophisticated worry that shows they understand learning is not just about getting the right answer, but about the mental workout required to reach it (Chen et al. 2025).

What is particularly striking is how the surveyed students view different GAI tools. Despite all the marketing hype around various platforms, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, no single tool emerged as the clear winner. My students seem to be in an experimental phase, trying different options and using multiple tools for different purposes rather than pledging allegiance to one platform. This suggests the GAI landscape for education is still wide open.

The poll also revealed something encouraging about fairness and access. My students overwhelmingly rejected the idea that paying for premium AI features gives anyone a leg up academically. Zero percent agreed that paid subscriptions lead to better grades or class performance. This suggests either that free GAI tools are powerful enough for most academic needs, or that students believe success depends more on how you use these tools (Chandrasekera et al. 2025) than which version you can afford.

Perhaps most importantly, these students showed they understand GAI's trickiest challenge: it makes avoiding effort incredibly easy. Nearly all agreed that GAI can be problematic when it becomes a shortcut rather than a learning aid (Reiter et al. 2025). This awareness suggests they are thinking critically about when GAI helps learning and when it hinders it.

The students in this survey also gave high marks to these summer courses as they taught them how to use GAI more effectively. This points to a crucial need: explicit education about AI literacy (Wang et al. 2025). Students want guidance on how to use these platforms responsibly and effectively, not just access to the tools themselves. Students want AI literacy programs that teach them how to use GAI for personalized, multimodal literacy support, prioritizing human agency, critical thinking, and socio-emotional learning while addressing equity and privacy concerns (Kalantzis & Cope 2025).

What emerges from this data is a generation that is neither technophobic nor uncritically tech-obsessed. These fifteen summer students are pragmatic experimenters who see GAI as a powerful tool that requires wisdom to use well (Makransky et al. 2025). They are excited about GAI's potential to make learning faster and more efficient, but they are also concerned about preserving the human elements of education: critical thinking, creativity, and authentic intellectual development (Shahzad et al. 2025).

Their responses suggest we are at a pivotal moment. The technology exists, students are ready to engage with it thoughtfully, and there is broad agreement on both its benefits and its risks (Leite 2025). The question is not whether AI will transform college education -- it already is (McDonald et al. 2025). The question is whether we will be intentional about shaping that transformation.

The students in this poll are showing us the way forward: embrace GAI's capabilities while remaining vigilant about its limitations. Use it to enhance learning, not replace it. And above all, remember that the goal is not just to get better grades or finish assignments faster -- it is to become better thinkers, more creative problem-solvers, and more informed citizens.

As we stand at this crossroads between traditional education and an AI-enhanced future, perhaps the most encouraging finding is this: students themselves are ready for the nuanced conversations necessary to navigate this change wisely. They are not asking us to ban GAI or to let it run wild in classrooms. They are asking for guidance on how to use it well. That is a conversation worth having.

keywords: how students use generative AI for studying and research; benefits and risks of AI in education for students; how to use generative AI without losing critical thinking; AI literacy skills students need in 2026; real student perspectives on AI in the classroom

References

ACT for Youth. (2024, April 17). Youth statistics: Internet and social media. https://actforyouth.org/adolescence/demographics/internet.cfm

Cengiz, S., & Peker, A. (2025). Generative artificial intelligence acceptance and artificial intelligence anxiety among university students: the sequential mediating role of attitudes toward artificial intelligence and literacy. Current Psychology, 44(9), 7991-8000.

Chandrasekera, T., Hosseini, Z., Perera, U., & Bazhaw Hyscher, A. (2025). Generative artificial intelligence tools for diverse learning styles in design education. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 23(2), 358-369.

Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Wüstenberg, T., Kizilcec, R. F., Fan, Y., Li, Y., ... & Bärnighausen, T. (2025). Effects of generative artificial intelligence on cognitive effort and task performance: study protocol for a randomized controlled experiment among college students. Trials, 26(1), 244.

Fayda-Kinik, F. S. (2025). Potential merits and demerits of generative artificial intelligence in higher education: Impressions from undergraduate students. Journal of Teacher Development and Education, 3(1), 14-25.

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2025). Literacy in the time of Artificial Intelligence. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1), e591.

Leite, H. (2025). Artificial intelligence in higher education: Research notes from a longitudinal study. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 215, 124115.

Makransky, G., Shiwalia, B. M., Herlau, T., & Blurton, S. (2025). Beyond the “Wow” Factor: Using Generative AI for Increasing Generative Sense-Making. Educational Psychology Review, 37(3), 60.

McDonald, N., Johri, A., Ali, A., & Collier, A. H. (2025). Generative artificial intelligence in higher education: Evidence from an analysis of institutional policies and guidelines. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 3, 100121.

Reiter, L., Jörling, M., Fuchs, C., Working group ‘Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education’, & Böhm, R. (2025). Student (Mis) Use of Generative AI Tools for University-Related Tasks. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 1-14.

Shahzad, M. F., Xu, S., & Asif, M. (2025). Factors affecting generative artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, use in higher education: An application of technology acceptance model. British Educational Research Journal, 51(2), 489-513.

Tang, X., Yuan, Z., & Qu, S. (2025). Factors Influencing University Students' Behavioural Intention to Use Generative Artificial Intelligence for Educational Purposes Based on a Revised UTAUT2 Model. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 41(1), e13105.

Wang, C., Wang, H., Li, Y., Dai, J., Gu, X., & Yu, T. (2025). Factors influencing university students’ behavioral intention to use generative artificial intelligence: Integrating the theory of planned behavior and AI literacy. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 41(11), 6649-6671.

Zhu, Y., Liu, Q., & Zhao, L. (2025). Exploring the impact of generative artificial intelligence on students’ learning outcomes: A meta-analysis. Education and Information Technologies, 1-29.

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