On October 5th of this year a high priority IT Notice was sent via email to students of Huddersfield University pertaining to the Computing and Library Services (CLS) new Chatbot in the HudHelp Self-Service Portal.

'Hudson', as the chatbot has been titled, makes use of generative AI (I was unable to find the source LLM that Hudson utilises) with the goal of 'giving staff and students a quick and convenient way to access support information.' Whilst the goals of this is obviously positive, there are staff, structures, and services in place that already fill this role, and furthermore the use of AI for this position poses practical and moral concerns.

First of all, generative AI is extremely bad for the environment. Training and using LLMs uses a huge amount of power, and the datacenters they are run from are based in suburbian and residential areas; they draw from local water supplies, using all the fresh water of the area for computer cooling systems, making the people living there suffer from drought and a lack of clean water. This is not a process I believe the University should or intends to be supporting.

Second of all, giving students another way to bypass University help services in favour of simply using an AI chatbot undoubtedly has a negative effect on both the staff roles and services that exist for the purposes the chatbot is attempting to circumvent, as well as the students who will not connect with or learn to use the University services, which sets a bad precident for other areas of both study and student life.

There are also issues regarding the implications of using generative AI for any purpose and its impact on the economy, creatives, critical thinking, etcetera; and wether the university is prepared for the dangers of having an LLM which they cannot control, speaking to students on behalf of the university.

Overall I do not think that the implications of having a chatbot as a part of the universities support services properly represents the intentions of the university nor the wishes of students, or even the general moral understanding of staff and students alike, and therefore it should be taken down. Thank you.

TLDR; generative AI is bad morally, environmentally, ethically, practically, and poses possible safeguarding and legal concerns for the university, the overall verdict being that the uni should not have a chatbot integrated into its support services, and so 'Hudson' should be removed as soon as possible.