In an era where universities are focusing on AI for academic purposes, little attention is being given to some students’ increasing emotional reliance on the tool, argues Agnieszka Piotrowska (Oxford Brookes University and Staffordshire University). Citing a study by King’s College London that student loneliness has nearly tripled in recent years, she argues that students may be driven to treat this problem through AI companionship or therapy. She says that universities must teach relational literacy to students so that they can understand how to learn from these conversations with AI, and ideally to rebuild in-person systems in higher education to remove the need for AI intimacy.
Times Higher Education
