We, the undersigned Faculty and Staff at UNCG, would like to register our concerns to the University’s Spartan AI program as presented to the Faculty Senate on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. We have concerns with the University’s uncritical attitude regarding “AI” and default stance to push buy-in of these systems. We argue for a set of alternative views to those presented to the FS. 

The corporate branding of chatbots and other plugins powered by large language models (LLMs) as “Artificial Intelligence” (or "Super Intelligence") is a clever sleight of hand. LLMs are neither artificial, as they require vast amounts of human-produced training data, nor intelligent, as they are nothing more than algorithms that guess which words should appear in which order based on probabilities determined based on training data. The big tech firms and their CEOs, the very people trying to sell us a product that they’ve already spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing and deploying, want us (and especially our employer) to buy and become reliant on their products. 

These models have the potential to be an environmental [1], psychological [2], social [3], and geopolitical [4] disaster [5]. The proliferation of “AI” as embodied by the models included in Spartan AI, have caused and will lead to vast amounts of environmental destruction, which we are already seeing with datacenter emissions and their water and energy consumption disturbing populations here and in the global south. Even if we assume the premise that our students need to learn how to use AI to be future efficient workers, we need to factor in (and teach them about) the horrible consequences of its use; its metrics cannot be reduced to just economic aspects. 

There is mounting evidence that the use of this technology causes people to lose skills and suffer cognitive decline as they surrender their thinking to machines [6]. In the classroom, AI frustrates teaching efforts as students use it to do their assignments; studies about the use of AI in education show concern about this and other issues such us student isolation, reduced creativity, and the undermining of student mastery and confidence [7]. The benefits for organizational success and efficiency are questionable, and major companies who use these models have begun to rethink their adoption [8]. As an institution that has the social mobility provided by a liberal education at the heart of its mission, UNCG should prioritize tools that improve skills such as critical thinking, communication, and problem solving, and cultivate adaptability [9]. The use of and reliance on AI undermines precisely these skills.

Spartan AI also ties the University to technologies that are largely used for purposes that harm our society. One of the included models is xAI’s Grok Model. The CEO of xAI, Elon Musk, is known for peddling racist conspiracy theories. The xAI model has been used to create and distribute explicit child sexual materials [10] and produce non-consensual sexualized images [11]. This model’s provenance calls into question if it can ever be used in a moral, ethical, and responsible manner. 

Furthermore, users of LLM-powered chatbots sometimes suffer from delusional thinking, which can lead to tragedy. There are currently over 50 lawsuits against OpenAI for consumer harm or wrongful death following episodes in which AI psychosis [12] led to suicide, murder, and even mass shootings [13]. In one particularly disturbing case, a man used Grok to create sexualized images of his underage stepdaughter, leading to his arrest for those images, then shot himself to death after being released on bail [14]. The xAI corporation has repeatedly sought to avoid legal liability for production of these images [15] and has defended them as protected speech [16]. 

Finally, this all comes at a time when public opinion on AI datacenters and the use of AI in general, especially among Generation Z, is at an all time low. Given this situation, the University really seems to be offering a “solution” to something faculty and students are not seeking. At the least, individual students and faculty should have the right to opt out as "conscientious objectors" of AI training or course requirements that involve AI usage. That is, while learning about the nature and consequences of AI is valuable, AI usage itself should be a choice rather than a requirement. Concerns about AI literacy and workplace readiness are best addressed through making sure our graduates can think critically and communicate well [9]. UNCG should do its best to ensure that these skills are developed, and save money by not rushing to adopt the worst versions of the technology.

[1] James O’Donnell, “AI’s Emissions are about to skyrocket even further,” MIT Technology, 12/13/2024. The piece notes that data center emissions have tripled since 2018 and that energy and water uses have also risen sharply, which has only continued in the almost two years since the piece was written. 

[2] Jude Cramer, “AI’s impact on cognitive ability: MIT Study Reveals More Troubling Data,” 06/16/2026, https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/ai-s-impact-on-cognitive-ability-mit-study-reveals-more-troubling-data/

[3] Harry Booth, “What the Numbers Show About AI’s Harms,” Time, 01/19/2026. Booth writes, “With the widespread adoption of AI around the world over the past year, the technology’s potential to cause harm has become clearer.”

[4] Cybele Mayes-Osterman, “The US is Waging AI assisted war on Iran: Is the US military’s use of AI making deadly mistakes,” USA Today, 04/01/2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/01/us-ai-assisted-war-iran/89299007007/ The US military is currently investigating whether the AI Maven Smart System had a role in the bombing in Iran in March of a school that killed at least 175 Iranians, most of them schoolgirls. The piece notes as well that, "In past military exercises, AI has demonstrated far lower accuracy than humans."

[5] See, for example, https://belmonrj.github.io/guide_students.html 

[6] See, for example, "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking," https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf and Stadler, M., Bannert, M., & Sailer, M. (2024). "Cognitive ease at a cost: LLMs reduce mental effort but compromise depth in student scientific inquiry." Computers in Human Behavior, 160, 108386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108386 

[7] See, for example, "AI and Education Report: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee in Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training," August 13, 2026, https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

[8] Chen, J. (2026, June 26). The 2026 AI Spending Reckoning: Why the Bills Came Due [Industry News Blog]. TechJournal. https://techjournal.org/ai-spending-reckoning-2026

[9] See e.g. Guest et al 2026 https://zenodo.org/records/20082828 

[10]  Davey Alba, Rachel Metz, “Large AI Dataset has over 1,000 Child Abuse Images, Researchers Find,” 02/26/2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-20/large-ai-dataset-has-over-1-000-child-abuse-images-researchers-find; Nick Robins-Early, “Child Sexual Abuse Survivor alleges Elon Musk’s AI chatbot used photos of her to generate new illegal images,” The Guardian, 09/03/2026, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/03/elon-musk-ai-grok-child-porn-lawsuit 

[11] Guzman, A. (2026, January 28). Grok created millions of sexualized images in days, report says [Newspaper]. Austin American-Statesman. https://www.statesman.com/business/technology/article/x-grok-elon-musk-ai-sexualized-images-children-21315854.php

[12] See for example https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis 

[13] See for example https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-consumer-harm-wrongful-death-lawsuits 

[14] See for example https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/lawsuit-grok-user-made-7k-child-sex-images-xai-only-reported-one-gang-rape-prompt/

[15] See for example https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/elon-musks-xai-sued-for-turning-three-girls-real-photos-into-ai-csam/ 

[16] See for example https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/elon-musk-xai-sues-minnesota-law-banning-ai-nudification/