“Students don’t want to be perceived by their peers as not being able to do the work,” said Alex Cale, a computer scientist at the University of Chicago and co-author of studywhich was presented at a conference in Barcelona, Spain, in April. “They don’t want to be seen by their peers as dishonest … And that feels deeply personal.”
Kale calls this phenomenon “social desirability bias,” the human tendency to answer questions in a way that makes us look good to others (and to ourselves) rather than being completely honest, even in an anonymous survey. In a separate online survey of 98 students conducted by the researchers, respondents said that admitting to using AI was akin to admitting that they “can’t complete course work on their own” or are “lazy.” Another respondent believed that students hide their use for fear of being caught and possibly expelled.
The researchers offer an alternative explanation for the gap. Students may overestimate how many of their peers use AI because it is such a visible part of campus life. They hear people talking about ChatGPT. They see open AI tools on laptop screens. This can start to feel like the norm. One survey respondent put it this way: “I think only a small percentage of students actually rely on the LLM to do coursework, while most students do not. This small percentage leads some students to assume that most use it.” (The current generation of post-2022 AI tools like ChatGPT are often called large language models, or LLMs.)
In other words, students may be using AI more than they admit, while the hype over AI may also give the impression that everyone is using it.
This same phenomenon—a large gap between what students admit they are doing and what they believe their peers are doing—is common in public health research. alcohol, drugs and sex. College students often overestimate how much their peers drink, use drugs, or have casual sex. And this has major implications for curbing unhealthy behaviors. When students believe that “everyone else is doing it,” they are more likely to get involved as well. The false perception becomes partly self-fulfilling.
More than 25 years ago, colleges became concerned that warning students about excessive drinking on campus was backfiring and actually encouraging students to get drunk. a lot changed strategydownplaying the problem of binge drinking and publishing statistics that most college students drink moderately. The number of students who said they drink heavily is down, according to some public health officials.
There may be some lessons here about how to encourage responsible use of AI, although the University of Chicago study did not link AI use to drugs or alcohol. But this raises the question that perceptions matter. If students believe that almost everyone relies on AI to complete coursework, they may feel pressured to use it themselves just to keep up.
Christine Fasiang is a graduate student in Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. Fasiang reported and wrote this story with Jill Barshai of The Hechinger Report.
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