Why do We Have to Talk About AI?

While a lot of college students love GenAI and use it all the time, a substantial number of college students hate AI.

Either way, GenAI is a thing that we need to discuss for a variety of reasons:

It’s Everywhere

That image of the two college students thinking about AI? Yeah, I made that with AI. The Google search you did when you searched for the best Mexican food in town? There’s an AI overview at the top of the results page. Did you use Grammarly to help with an essay last semester? Yup, that’s AI now, too.

There’s little to no chance that whatever field you end up working in post-college will not use GenAI in some way.  So, if we’re working to prepare you for that field, we can’t just ignore AI, even if we might want to.

It’s Trending

That’s not ‘trending’ like trending on social media. Rather, it’s trending upward, as in the number of workers who can or do use it increasing. In October 2025, the Pew Research Center released the results of their analysis of AI usage by American workers, comparing the data to 2024:

• The percentage of workers who use AI for some of their work rose from 14% to 19%
• The percentage of workers with bachelor’s degrees who use AI for at least some of their work rose from 20% to 28% and those with less than a bachelor’s rose from 13% to 16%

In their annual Work Trend Index Report, Microsoft reported that 47% of corporate leaders they surveyed described “prioritizing AI-specific skilling of their existing workforce” as a top priority and 78% of those leaders are “considering hiring for AI-specific roles to prepare for the future.”

Like it or hate it, AI is only getting bigger.

It’s About How

This course is not going to push you toward the idea of using GenAI to do everything or even most things. As those surveys revealed, most American employees still do the vast majority of their work without using GenAI. But, if you’re going to use, you need to understand how best to utilize the tools you have access too. So, we’ll focus on:

• What can it help with?
• What should it not help with?
• How do you use it ethically and responsibly?