Topic: How do you plan to integrate Al in your life going forward – whether personally
or professionally? Do you feel you have a choice here, for example is deciding not to
use Al an option?

Al will be a big part of my day-to-day life from here on out. On a personal level I do not enjoy
interacting with Al. especially emotionally; I also do not agree with the ecological costs of building
massive and powerful Als. However as a chemistry major going into industry, there is not a piece
of data I will ever collect that I won’t be putting into Al. My field requires me to know how to use Al
and its really become a non-negotiable so regardless of any concerns I have, I would not have a
choice in my Al use.”

This topic is important because research and development is an extremely important step in the development of new technologies. In chemistry research there are so many necessary steps and checks that AI would not be able to pass.

https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/ai-models-for-chemistry-charting-the-landscape-in-materials-and-life-sciences

When it comes to AI use in the classroom, there is a not-so-clear line between “enough” and “too much”. According to the DInsmore and Fryer [1], the most important part of the learning process is also the part that using AI tends to skip over, the struggle phase. There is an argument to be made that this is evidence AI does not belong in the classroom end-of story, and I do not disagree. As a student, my end goal is not just to get a degree but also to use the information I’ve learned in my endeavors. A degree is something you can put on your resume as proof you did the work and know things that others don’t. AI clearly muddies this process. Once a student has obtained their degree, they can get hired at a job based on those credentials. They are not “preparing” anymore, so the use of AI in the workplace is a much more open discussion. traditionally, whoever gets things done the fastest is the “better” worker but they are both doing the job at equal levels of success. in this case, AI is actively cutting down on wasted time and inefficiencies, it is not sacrificing any level of quality since it is not the one determining the quality.

Works Cited

[1] Dinsmore, Dan L., and Luke K. Fryer. “What Does Current genAI Actually Mean for Student Learning?” Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 125, 2026, article 102834,

In our Tuesday readings, we explored a traditional definition for creativity, and Bhatia furthers this by arguing that while AI can produce “artifacts,” it lacks the human capacity for synthesis To me, creativity isn’t just about generating a new sequence of words; it’s about the emotional intent behind them. If there is no “why” behind the work, is it truly creative, or just a sophisticated calculation?

I asked the AI to maintain Silverstein’s iconic rhythm and tone but shift the setting to a sunny day under a shaded tree. Here is the excerpt it produced:

“Today, while lying in the shade, Beneath the tent the branches made, Some Whatifs skipped across the grass And wouldn’t let the quiet pass… Whatif a beetle climbs my knee? Whatif a branch falls off the tree? Whatif the grass begins to prickle? Whatif I sprout a giant pickle?”

On the surface, the output is mediocre at best, as it followed the rhythm instructions perfectly. other than that it looks like it took another shell silverstein poem and swapped a couple of words. Essentially it took a picture of his homework and changed a couple things.

When Silverstein writes about “poison in my cup” or his parents getting divorced, he is tapping into the real anxieties of childhood. The AI, conversely has no experiences to tap into, It’s choosing words that rhyme (prickle/pickle) without any underlying emotional logic. As Bhatia (2025) notes, “AI doesn’t feel tension. It doesn’t labor through ambiguity.” The machine isn’t worried about the future, only predicting the next most likely token in a sequence.

Going into this week, I viewed AI as a powerful collaborator and a way to “reduce processing resources” (UT Aspire) for my technical writing. But this experiment shifted my perspective on the creative side. While I can use a “Physics Professor” persona to fix a lab report, I can’t prompt an AI to have a childhood or feel anxiety.

It has solidified my view that genAI is a calculator for language, not a source of art. It can augment my process by helping me brainstorm structures, but it can never replace the elements that make things human and real that make a poem actually resonate.

Reference: Bhatia, Ashish. “The Artifact Isn’t the Art: Rethinking Creativity in the Age of AI.” Freethink, April 4, 2025. https://www.freethink.com/opinion/studio-ghibli-chatgpt-creativity.

Bad prompting example:

I was using Google Gemini to revise and reformat text for a formal technical report for my Physics 2 Lab

Original prompt: ” remake the abstract, making sure to follow the guidelines listed in the template very strictly.I also need you to add to the conclusion about how our experimental data for 1/r relation did not match the theoretical. be sure to include how the data range of 3 different distances is not very much data. while you’re doing that, go through my PDF and make sure theres no spelling or grammatical errors.”

I also provided it with a draft of an abstract and an example of what a finished abstract looks like

Result: The paragraph returned by the AI did not answer the prompt and complete the task fully. I very clearly asked it to add a part to the conclusion that it fully ignored. It also created a very long conclusion even though I asked it to keep the entire thing short.

Using the UT guide for prompt engineering, I have reworked the prompt to provide me with a much better result.

Reworked prompt:

Why this is improved
The UT paper claims that the AI needs to know who it is, who it is talking to, and why it is doing what is is doing (UT Aspire Prompt Literacy page 2). This new prompt establishes the AI’s identity as an expert, identifies the professor/academic audience , and clearly states the goal of a submission-ready report.

By breaking the request into three numbered, sequential tasks, the number of “processing resources” is reduced and the AI needs to do less logic-based work leading to greater accuracy (UT Aspire Prompt Literacy page 2)
Assigning the AI a specific professional persona helps reduce the likelihood of hallucinations and ensures the language is appropriate (UT Aspire Prompt Literacy page 2)
It tells the AI exactly what to include and what tone to use, preventing broad or general responses (UT Aspire Prompt Literacy page 2)

Before I conducted any research, I thought the biggest ethical issues around AI were things like bias or misinformation. I had very little idea of the massive water crisis spawned from the AI boom.

In the MIT’s article’s breakdown of generative AI’s environmental impact, A single ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than if you searched the same thing on Google (Zewe). That’s not even the biggest piece however, the actual training of the AI systems consumes an absurd amount of resources. The article states that training a model like OpenAI’s GPT-3 consumed roughly 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity (Zewe). It’s important to note that these numbers are just the training phase and the energy demands keep piling up every time anyone uses the model. It’s not even just electricity, water use was already a big problem that has only been made worse by the AI industry. For every kilowatt hour of energy a data center consumes, it needs around two liters of water for cooling (Zewe) and these facilities are pulling from real municipal water supplies and affecting local ecosystems.

Going forward, I’m going to be more intentional about when and how I use AI tools. Not every question needs a ChatGPT prompt sometimes a search engine or my own brain is perfectly fine.

Works Cited

Zewe, Adam. “Explained: Generative AI’s Environmental Impact.” MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 17 Jan. 2025, https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117

Hi my name is David I am a sophomore Chemistry major, I grew up in Denver and love the Broncos.

I think that AI is currently playing the wrong role in the lives of people today. If you use AI you know how useful its features can be however AI can also be used to skip over any learning whatsoever.

** I could not upload any image whatsoever but imagine there is a landscape photo of when I was hiking in Denver**