How our students feel about generative AI + Reader survey

We surveyed students in our generative AI class at Drake about their use and their feelings about generative AI

Author

Innovation Profs
January 30, 2026

In partnership with

đź“« Subscribe | 🗣️ Hire us to speak | 🤝 Sponsor our newsletter & more

Welcome to the Friday edition of our newsletter. We spend Friday’s going deeper into tools and trends related to generative AI (and Tuesdays sharing news updates). This week we’re sharing results from our first-day survey in our generative AI course…

🥪 Sign up for FREE AI Lunch Club events

Our AI Lunch Club series returns this spring with four FREE virtual events to help you better understand generative AI tools. Click each link to get more info and to register:

These events are offered free thanks to a sponsorship from technology and management consultancy, Lean TECHniques.

Survey: How our students feel about Gen AI

Once again, the Innovation Profs (us!) are teaching an Intro to Generative AI course for students at Drake University this spring semester. And just as we did last year, we gave them a first-day survey to learn more about their use of generative AI.

The students are mostly studying Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence (where Professor Porter teaches) or are in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (where Professor Snider teaches).

Before we dive into their results, we made a version of the survey for our newsletter readers to fill out (we changed it up some to reflect that you are likely not college students). Take this survey before seeing what our students answered.

What our student said

Let’s dive into some results from our college students…

First, we asked how many of them have used generative AI tools, and 100 percent of the’ve used tools. This is not surprising, but last year that number was 96 percent.

We asked how often they use generative AI, and 47 percent said they use it daily (with 13 percent saying they use it multiple times per day). That is up from 22 percent using daily last year.

Next we asked what tools they use the most, and ChatGPT remained the most frequent choice. Pretty much all of them this year and last year listed ChatGPT, but Gemini appears to be on the rise this year.

Support our sponsor:

Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.

Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.

More survey results

The split of students saying they use generative AI for schoolwork remained the same, with 80 percent saying they do.

Last year 42 percent of them said they feel very positive or somewhat positive about the idea of using generative AI for schoolwork. This year that dropped slightly to 38 percent.

But more of them this year (83 percent vs. 76 percent) said they feel using generative AI for schoolwork is ethical.

A higher percentage this year said they expect to use generative AI at their first job after graduation - 83 percent compared to 69 percent last year.

We also added a couple new questions this year…

We asked what they use generative AI for, and then we gave them some options based on these use cases. Here’s what they said.

  • Research - 70%

  • Generative ideas - 70%

  • Writing assistant - 63%

  • Creativity - 50%

  • Editing - 47%

  • Fun and nonsense - 47%

  • Things you used to Google - 47%

  • Enhanced learning - 30%

  • Healthier living - 23%

  • Coding or programming - 20%

  • Therapy/companionship - 3%

We asked if they have ever used generative AI as a therapist, and 20 percent said yes.

And finally, we asked about a statement OpenAI’s CEO made about how young people use AI - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said young people use AI as an "operating system for their life." Do you think that statement fits how you use AI tools? 33 percent of them said that yes, they do use AI as an operating system for their life.

Check back next week and we’ll share results from our reader survey.