ChatGPT: student chatbot use ‘increasing loneliness’ – Times Higher Education

Universities should exercise caution as they outsource more functions to artificial intelligence (AI), according to the authors of a study that links student usage of ChatGPT to loneliness and a reduced sense of belonging.

Australian researchers surveyed 387 university students in different parts of the globe to seek to understand the less understood side effects of the rapid uptake of the OpenAI tool since itslaunch in November 2022.

They found evidence that while AI chatbots designed for information provision may be associated with student performance, when social support, psychological well-being, loneliness and sense of belonging are considered it has a net negative effect on achievement, according to the paper published inStudies in Higher Education.

Alongside ChatGPT which is primarily used by students for help with academic tasks universitieshave adopted a range of chatbotsto help with other processes, including in admissions and student support.

It seems students may be seeking out AI help instead of librarians, student advisers and counsellors, and this means universities have no visibility from a whole-of-student continuity of care perspective, said Joseph Crawford, a senior lecturer in management at the University of Tasmania and one of the authors of the study.

Universities could save money deploying these tools at the expense of students spending time building their social skills and social capital.

The study found that students who reported using ChatGPT more displayed some evidence of feeling socially supported by the AI, explained Dr Crawford, who worked on thepaper with Kelly-Ann Allen and Bianca Pani, both of Monash University, and Michael Cowling, based at Central Queensland University.

But the paper also shows that increased chatbot usage led to human relationships weakening possibly without users even realising.

Those who got their support from friends and family reported reduced loneliness, higher grade performance and were less willing to leave universitythan those who reported being socially supported by the AI.

Dr Crawford said it was still not completely clear whether AI use causes lower performance, or whether students experiencing lower performance turn more often to AI.

But he recommended that universities should find ways to promote peer networks, social opportunities for students and other ways of building social connections as a way of insulatingthem from some of the more negative effects of AI use.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com

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ChatGPT: student chatbot use 'increasing loneliness' - Times Higher Education

The Rwanda plan has become another Brexit for the Tories – The New Statesman

Nostalgia stalked Westminster yesterday: a nostalgia for Brexit. Why do I say this? Because both the media and Tory MPs seemed to be pretending that the vote on the second reading of the Rwanda bill was a reincarnation of the Brexit wars. Throughout the afternoon, Tory MPs burrowed into various committee rooms around Westminster Palace to fashion a response. Mark Francois a stout Tory MP who, after a stint as a coalition whip and minister, came into his own as a parliamentary Brexit pugilist grandiosely proclaimed outside Portcullis House that he and his colleagues on the partys right would abstain.

Over in the chamber, the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, pen in hand, hair slicked back like an Australian Open tennis player, chastised the parliamentarians sat opposite for slashing away at windmills. But Labour was not the main show. That was Robert Jenrick, the erstwhile immigration minister, who rose to declare that here he stood and he could do no other.

Except abstain on the bill in order to improve it at the committee stage. Priti Patel, who Jenrick doffed his hat to multiple times, was sitting a row back as a reminder of all those migration ministers who had failed before Jenrick. In truth, it seemed that his speech was delivered with one eye on the leadership contest that will follow electoral defeat. He was parading in front of his fellow Tory MPs.

Despite his words and his abstention the bill passed with a majority of 44. For all the rigamarole the breakfast meeting between Sunak and mutinous MPs, the photo ops, the hills climbed and marched down again the result was as predicted. The government is still wrestling with a despair-ridden parliamentary party that it can barely control. It is still running out of time to change course before the election. And its message is still incoherent.

Any success the Tories scrape from the Rwanda scheme will be blotted out in thick ink in the papers by vindictive, anonymous quotes speculating about the leadership. It feels like parliamentary Conservatives are trying to start a car while half of their MPs are deflating the tyres and the other half refuse to turn the ignition. The partys disunity precludes any success. Sunak held off a seismic defeat in the Commons but opposition to the bill will continue into the new year.

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What rang true in Jenricks speech was this: illegal migration as an issue is not going away. If we assume that the Rwanda scheme fails and that Labour wins the election, then this will become a problem for Starmer a leader who pumped up expectations in his speech yesterday that he will reduce immigration. He claims to want to chart a new approach, but is he destined to follow the path of raising voters hopes only to be constrained by what that means in reality?

This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substackhere.

[See also: Labour is failing to build a new political consensus]

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The Rwanda plan has become another Brexit for the Tories - The New Statesman