Context: I am an instructor at a public university in the United States. This reports how students at my institution appear to be thinking about AI as of spring/summer 2026. This is drawn mostly from interaction with my own students (both in spring semester classes and a summer class) as well as from a day-long workshop on AI that I moderated for a student organization. Input from my students took the form of universal, written, pre-class submissions plus self-selected participation into discussion.

What I present below mostly takes the form of a synthetic consensus from these discussions. There were obviously a range of views on any given issue.

Student Background: The students from my courses who participated in these discussions have moderate exposure to AI agents via those courses. All of them had nearly completed a Claude Code project by the time of the discussions and had extensively used AI for other coursework (in addition to whatever personal use predates that). They had done readings (which varied across the courses) establishing baseline knowledge on AI, the geopolitics of AI, and AI risk. I had also lectured on these topics. The students participating in the workshop had self-selected into [...]

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Outline:

(02:52) Perspective #1: There has not been rapid AI progress

(06:14) Perspective #2: Impressive progress or not, AI is going to wreck their lives, the economy, and the social contract. They may well die as a result.

(08:54) Perspective #3: Support for a different pause

(11:13) Perspective #4: Catastrophic/existential risk arguments are sci-fi distractors from the urgent social/economic/political problems associated with AI.

(12:55) Perspective #5: If AI leaders genuinely believe the technology is existentially risky, that's a good thing.

(14:21) Perspective #6: AI will not go rogue because AI does not have, and is likely incapable of having, desires.

(18:01) Perspective #7: The Hugging Face Incident (summer students only)

(18:30) Perspective #8: This is definitely a bubble and it's about to pop.

(19:34) Perspective #9: They're worried about the youth (i.e., the preteens)

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First published:
August 13th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ySXuvJcqRindQwAk7/how-my-students-think-about-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How My Students Think About AI” by dvd

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“How My Students Think About AI” by dvd