April 20, 2026
UMaine's Student Newspaper since 1875.
OPINION: I remember when I was a kid and I was first taught about English “knocker uppers” whose job was to go around and knock upon the windows of all the houses in the morning to wake the people up. I don’t bring them up to point out the double entendre in the name they have, but instead to marvel at the oddity of the job. Alarm clocks and phones have made that job seem so silly and useless, yet at the time it actually employed people. Still, technology made the job obsolete. I’m not upset that these people had to go out and find something useful to do with their time. As the university plans to offer a student AI access system, I think not of the benefits of the alarm clock, but of the people that refused to get one without realizing that the knocker uppers wouldn’t be around to help them even if they wanted them to.
As of yet, the proposed plan is unfinished. Several ideas have floated around, but ignoring cost (it’s not germane to my argument), I will state that I only argue with the belief that the fee will be optional. That part is important because I believe AI is a tool that should be available to students as opposed to being forced upon them. The future arrives whether we like it or not. The college should provide and give opportunity to any student who wants to use AI for the uses that they see fit. Might its greater proliferation create more cheating? Sure, but so did the phone and laptop, yet lack of access to those devices would create serious hardships in everyday life. Moreover, I do not think less of the construction worker who uses a crane to build a building than one who doesn’t. AI, when used in professional settings, does not simply do the work for someone, it aids them in ways that make their efficiency and production better. Knowing how to use it then allows someone to drastically improve their human capital.
Refusing to learn it may also yield a negative result for students. I mentioned the laptop and phone. Students who lack either could certainly still take notes in class, but if they believed that the internet simply did what you wanted when you looked it up in the search bar, they would be left far behind those who understood spreadsheets, coding, and shared project files. They would miss out on countless emails, Zooms, and texts. They would be left behind in favor of those who accepted the benefits and resisted the negative of the technology all because they refused to understand it. That can certainly be a student’s own personal decision, but the university cannot enforce such a silly position upon every student.
I will lastly address the idea that AI is seriously hurting the environment in many ways and that is why the university must not help students achieve an equal access ability to the tool. It is true that AI uses large amounts of energy and water, but so do countless technologies people use every day without thinking twice. Data centers, streaming services, cloud storage, phones and laptops all require enormous amounts of electricity to function. The difference is that AI’s rise is already pushing companies to invest in cleaner forms of energy such as nuclear power, solar energy and more efficient cooling systems. If anything, the demand AI creates may help speed up the development of better energy infrastructure in the future. The answer to environmental concerns is not to pretend AI will go away, because it will not, but to make sure the systems powering it become cleaner over time.
All things inevitably change and one must be open to it. Concerns are valid but often assume the current equation is the way it will always be, or sometimes assume a bad faith version of what is being encouraged. The optional fee to get access to AI would allow every student an opportunity to get familiar with a tool they may think will be required in the future and wouldn’t fall into a trap of banning or compelling the use for students. A university creates opportunities and this is one we need.
Published in Editorials and Opinion
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UMaine's Student Newspaper since 1875.
