At Bowling Green State University (BGSU), students are increasingly hearing that artificial intelligence (AI) is “just a tool”—but what does that actually mean? 

At BGSU, every course syllabus states that using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Co-Pilot and others is allowed for brainstorming ideas, finding information on a topic and more. Faculty and staff at BGSU discourage students from using AI to complete assigned group work, drafting writing assignments and writing paragraphs, sentences or papers for classes. Otherwise, professors decide if they want to use AI in class, according to AI Resources from the BGSU website. 

Professors’ Feelings Toward AI

According to an article from Pew Research, most Americans are wary or concerned about AI rather than excited to use it in everyday life. With this wariness, people are concerned that AI will affect creativity and relationships, but are open to using it for data analysis. Though 18 to 29-year-olds are more aware of AI and use it more than older Americans. 

Alise Suelzer, an associate teaching professor in accounting, said AI can be helpful in finding examples for her classes.

“I use it to develop case studies for my classes. I teach tax, so if I want to give a tax return assignment, it’s really easy to say [to AI], ‘Hey, give me an example of a family with all these different kinds of things.’ Then I use those assignments…But I find it [AI] for creative things, I like it,” Suelzer said.

Andrew Kear, an associate professor with dual appointment in the Department of Political Science and the School of Earth, Environment and Society, does not use AI in the classroom but allows students to use it in specific circumstances.

“As far as use in the classroom, I pretty much say, ‘you can use it.’ Say you have a reading and you want to have AI dissect the reading and make an outline for you, come up with key points or key questions, I’m all for that. I just don’t want AI writing the paper. I’m in the middle of the road as far as usage goes for students,” Kear said. 

Kear said his personal feeling towards AI comes from his environmental perspective. 

“I would say overall, I’m very skeptical of it, and from an environmental perspective, I’m extraordinarily skeptical of it,” Kear said. 

Similar to Kear, Suelzer is also cautious of AI, even within her usage of it. 

“I think somewhere between tolerant and like, I’m not as gung-ho about it as some in the college [College of Business]. I think some people are more excited than I am about it, but I definitely see the potential of it,” Suelzer said.

Though Suelzer said that she uses AI in her classroom every day, she does not see the value in using it for everything. 

“My main concern is that it [AI] becomes a crutch and that if you use it too much, you’re not critically thinking and you’re not training your brain to do what it needs to do. I do feel like there’s still a role for that,” Suelzer said. 

AI is used as a helpful tool for breakthroughs, though Kear said he believes human intelligence is where breakthroughs will happen.

“If I were to put money on something, I would put money on our own minds and investigating what we can do with the untapped potential of our minds rather than this technology that potentially could lead to some significant breakthroughs in our civilization, but also has a lot of costs,” Kear said. 

Students’ Feelings Toward AI

Some BGSU students, like Kristina Mills, a senior majoring in digital art, do not want to see artists losing their jobs to AI.

“As an artist, we see AI pushing people out of the art departments, and we see people firing artists, and also just the environmental impact, and we see how much water AI takes up. When I started college, the job market was competitive in the arts, but now it’s like companies don’t even want to hire artists anymore,” Mills said. 

Josh Carr, a senior majoring in finance and business management, feels differently towards AI, especially relating to his major.

“Entry level for the jobs that I’m trying to go into, which is banking. I think some of those entry-level jobs will be replaced. I think that it won’t replace it at a higher level. I think that it’ll create more jobs than it replaces, as the internet did. I mean, the internet took away a bunch of jobs, but it also added a bunch of jobs, so I think the AI will do the same,” Carr said. 

According to an article in the 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research, the industries having a high exposure to generative AI, like visual arts and writing, have seen up to 15-25% reductions in traditional hiring, with other sectors, like finance and data analysis, are likely to see 8-12% with efficiency. 

AI Replacing Search Engines

Kear said search engines powered by AI are the first tool that pops up when you go to look something up online.

“Historically, you get on Google and do a search, but now AI is the first thing that pops up for everything. I think that because it’s being rolled out so fast and it’s being pushed on us so fast, it’s increasing use right now,” Kear said. 

Suelzer said that she has already replaced Google and is now using AI for her questions. 

“I think for me it’s [AI] already replacing Google. It remembers, and it builds on itself. So you basically have a conversation with it, and it understands where you’re coming from, and with this tool… after a while, it knows who I am. It knows I’m a teacher. It knows the kind of students I have…Google doesn’t really do anything [like that],” Suelzer said.

In 2025, a study found that in a large-scale experiment with 1,526 people using AI like ChatGPT to complete real tasks was faster and likely to find accurate answers than Google. Though those people would still have a preference for Google, according to an article in the Nürnberg Institut für Marktentscheidungen.

AI at BGSU

Kear said while grading to see if students used AI to write their paper, he does not use the Turnitin software, but does it himself. 

“In Canvas, we have the Turnitin software, that not only checks for plagiarism and whatnot, but it checks for percentage match of AI. It can be inaccurate. I don’t necessarily trust AI identifying AI…I trust my own sense of who wrote this versus the software,” Kear said. 

In 2025, an analysis found that AI detectors were misclassifying human-written text as AI, especially with a simple and concise writing style. The study showed that the system is not reliable enough to make high-level academic decisions, according to an article in Devdiscourse.

Suelzer said she and her colleagues went to a conference to better understand AI and its full potential. 

“American Association of the League of Schools of Business… had a seminar where they had people [who were] kind of experts in AI…and then just walk through this tool and different uses, like how can we use it in administrative tasks, getting strategic plans together for the college and those sorts of things, as well as how to use it in your classroom,” Suelzer said.

For the Schmidthorst College of Business, BGSU has purchased an AI platform focused on education, but this platform may begin to spread across the university.

“We have for the faculty there’s actually a product called BoodleBox that they [BGSU] have purchased for all of the business college, and they’re talking about doing it for the university,” Suelzer said.

BoodleBox is an education-focused AI platform designed to help people learn about and with AI responsibly. BoodleBox partners with educators and institutions to help students be more responsible with AI, according to the about us page on BoodleBox. 

AI has made its way into BGSU, but Kear raised a crucial question about its role. 

“The way we’re being pushed as a society is that technology is great to embrace, and AI is great to embrace, and AI is going to solve our problems. My question is, ‘what problems?’” Kear said.

 To learn more about AI: AI Resources