How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Human Interactions Among Students in Higher Education

By Samuel Mwangi Ngari

A student isolating himself showing how AI affects human interaction.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized and changed human interactions over the years with students from higher institutions being the most affected from this abrupt change.

From education integrity being corrupted, with the growing number of AI tools available to students AI proves itself to be a formidable force to be reckoned with. However, the most notable impact is on human interactions, AI has changed the way students communicate with many preferring AI tools like Chat GPT to replace interpersonal relationships. Students using AI tools as therapists and overly depending on these platforms to make decisions raises important questions on the negative implications and the future of human interactions.

Today, the saying ‘No Man is an Island’ is arguably losing meaning with people relying on AI tools to replace human relationships and modern lifestyles promoting for more independence ways of living. Students prefer AI for its capability through machine learning to analyze large language models to give output understandable to humans. Unlike search engines, AI tools stand out by giving generative straight to the point responses unlike the former, which normally refer one to multiple webpages with enormous information to mall through.

Many students may justify their use of AI to replace interpersonal relationships to either experiencing anxiety while talking about private matters, ironically having privacy in these AI tools is a treacherous hallucination with many of these tools being accused of breaching user’s data unlawfully. Many students also prefer the quick responses provided by these AI tools, unlike human interactions which may take forever to get a response. This point of view is however skewed, while AI tools may give one quick responses, one risks getting biased information from these tools. This is because most of these tools are programmed to give outputs that please the users, who also lead the questions, further guiding the answers. These tools also generate responses that may lack factual evidence and the likelihood of many students doing further research is dismal.

This means having conversations that lack emotions, human experience and feelings. These conversations also lack a human perspective which means there may be scanty criticism of the user’s actions.

Hence, as we continue to embrace new technologies it is paramount to train ourselves on media literacy to avoid affecting our minds psychologically by becoming dependent on new technologies. It is also important for students to interact and grow their social capital because, by not doing so they are doing themselves an injustice by not growing their social skills fully.

AI dependency while not recognized by the DSM-5, high chances are in the future the addictive effects are likely to be diagnosed like other addictions. AI like other technologies is a double-edged sword, hence the need to use these tools while recognizing the need to socialize in heathy ways to avoid technology induced mental disorders and to reap the much-needed benefits of technology.

More research studies should be conducted in higher institutions of learning to fully investigate the impacts of AI use on human interactions and the inferences made be used to create awareness on the proper use of AI to improve human interactions and personal wellbeing.