If you’re active on social media, then there’s a chance you have heard of the term over-consumption.
By definition, over-consumption is “the action of consuming something to excess.”
Over-consumption culture knows no bounds; it can creep into nearly every aspect of our lives, whether it’s purchasing massive hauls of clothing from fast fashion brands like SHEIN or buying the newest trending product.
But an example of over-consumption you may not realize is the overuse of AI.
Whether you use it or not, there’s no denying that AI is everywhere. It’s especially taken off amongst students. While it can be a useful tool for students, at what point does it become a threat to education?
Despite gaining traction over the past decade, AI, or Artificial Intelligence, has actually been around since 1956, when the term was coined at the Dartmouth Conference.
From a student’s perspective, I don’t believe that AI is necessarily a bad thing when used in moderation, but I do think it’s easy to abuse.
For example, in my personal experience, AI has been useful for things like helping explain the steps to solve math or chemistry equations when I’m stuck, checking essays for grammatical errors, or creating a personalized study guide for an upcoming test.
On the other hand, when students have the ability to have an essay written for them or a homework assignment filled out within seconds, it becomes a serious threat to critical thinking and work ethics among students.
The over-consumption of AI, especially when it comes to education, can lead to something called “cognitive offloading.” In correlation to AI, this means letting AI work and think for you in order to reduce mental effort.
However, that mental effort is crucial to human life. Using AI for every aspect of your life takes away experience. It takes away the memories of going to a friend’s house to work on an assignment, the feeling of pride in writing a book report that you’re genuinely proud of, or the realization that the subject you’re learning is something you could pursue a career in.
In the end, AI is only going to continue to work its way into our daily lives, so we should learn how to use it in a way that promotes critical thinking and creativity within us rather than for us.
