Unclear rules on AI use in classrooms is creating confusion and distrust

Whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom.

- Elise Silva

The advent of generative AI has elicited waves of frustration and worry across academia for all the reasons one might expect: Early studies are showing that artificial intelligence tools can dilute critical thinking and undermine problem-solving skills. And there are many reports that students are using chatbots to cheat on assignments.

But how do students feel about AI? And how is it affecting their relationships with peers, instructors and their coursework?

While there is a growing body of research exploring how generative AI is affecting higher education, there is one group that we worry is under-represented in this literature, yet perhaps uniquely qualified to talk about the issue: our students.

Our team ran a series of focus groups with 95 students across our campuses in the spring of 2025 and found that whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom.

While AI products such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude are, of course, affecting how students learn, their emergence is also changing their relationships with their professors and with one another.

"IT'S NOT GOING TO JUDGE YOU" Most of our focus group participants had used AI in the academic setting — when faced with a time crunch, when they perceive something to be "busy work", or when they are "stuck" and worry that they can't complete a task on their own. We found that most students don't start a project using AI, but many are willing to turn to it at some point.

Many students described positive experiences using AI to help them study or answer questions, or give them feedback on papers. Some even described using AI instead of a professor, tutor or teaching assistant.