Ethical Concerns of Meta AI in Higher Education

Abstract

The objective of the research study was to investigate the ethical issues relating to application of Meta AI in higher education among undergraduate and postgraduate students. As the use of artificial intelligence tools in academics rapidly becomes integrated, such ethical aspects as academic integrity, plagiarism, responsible usage and institutional policies have gained more and more significance. In as much as it provides scholarly support in research and learning processes, Meta AI has also made headlines in regard to its un-ethical application among learners. To make the participants diverse in their experiences and perceptions, the sample of the study included 400 students in four universities in Lahore with two public and two private universities to represent diversity among them. The tools used to collect the data were a structured questionnaire with closed-ended questions and a Likert scale to analyze the perspectives of students on ethical concerns related to the use of Meta AI in academic practice. The quantitative results also revealed that the issue of ethics is still a major dilemma when it comes to the application of AI tools in institutions of higher learning. A significant percentage of learners indicated that there were no explicit ethical principles of AI use in institutions (59.29%). Also, a significant proportion of the students confessed that they occasionally used AI tools to get unfair academic benefits (54.39%), whereas a smaller number of students had had associations with plagiarism and academic dishonesty involving AI-generated materials (17.67%). These results suggest that there is an increased necessity of ethical consideration and morally responsible AI usage amongst college students. The paper finds that whereas Meta AI can assist in learning and academical performance, its application in the absence of appropriate ethical guidelines poses a danger to integrity in academics and accountable study behaviors. Consequently, colleges and universities need to create effective policies, ethics, and training material to facilitate responsible and ethical usage of AI technologies among students.