MULTIPLE U.S. COLLEGE CAMPUSES — Graduates at at least three U.S. college commencement ceremonies this month loudly booed speakers who praised artificial intelligence. The disruptions occurred as AI’s expanding role in education and society has intensified debates among students about its ethical implications and impact on learning.

Student dissent reflects broader concerns about how institutions are integrating AI into academic life. Paul Webster, a rising sophomore studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "Part of the learning process is struggling to understand and break down the content. If you use AI for that — which is what professors were encouraging students to do — it severely impacts your actual understanding."

Zoe Kaufman, who graduated from Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, Virginia, with a degree in psychology, said: "I just feel this general sense among all of us of AI kind of being forced on us. Nowadays, the school is encouraging us to download different AIs and use them, and it just feels like it’s kind of coming for everyone’s jobs, just at different paces." She added that when she sought résumé help from her university’s career center, she was advised to feed her information to ChatGPT. According to Kaufman, a career center staffer explained: "A robot’s going to be reading your application anyway, so just have one write it."

On at least five college campuses, students have formed anti-AI groups to advocate for slowing the technology’s unchecked development. Holly Elmore, executive director of PauseAI US, said she has seen a growing sentiment among students that current AI development is potentially dangerous and proceeding too quickly. Elmore added that chapter leaders feel schools have imposed "all this pressure to just abandon any sense of morality or honor about writing your own words and doing your own work." She also said students "feel like their lives are really like turned into chaos, their futures are thrown into chaos, and then they turn to things that give them meaning, and then that, too, is going to be choked out" by AI.

A Gallup and Lumina Foundation poll conducted in October of over 3,500 college students found that 57% use AI for classwork at least once a week, with 21% using it daily. Students reported using AI most often to understand coursework and check homework answers. Dozens of other student groups at universities including Georgetown and the University of Washington have formed to focus on technical AI safety research rather than opposition.