Some academics are deliberately avoiding generative AI, citing concerns about accuracy, environmental impact, and ethics

Researchers such as marine zoologist Danielle Crowley at Bangor University, mathematician Hugh Possingham at the University of Queensland, and chemist Audrey Moores at McGill University have chosen not to use genAI tools, despite peer pressure to adopt them.

Key concerns include AI hallucinations (false or misleading information presented with conviction), incorrect AI-generated chemical representations, environmental costs—a study published in Patterns estimates that in 2025 the carbon footprint of AI systems globally could have been between 32.6 million and 79.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide—and questions about copyright ethics and training data transparency.

According to a Nature survey of about 5,000 researchers published in May last year, more than 90% of respondents felt it was acceptable to use AI for editing or translating their own text, but only a minority said they had actually used AI tools in their work. A more recent Elsevier survey of 3,234 researchers published last November found that 58% of researchers used AI in their work, up from 37% the previous year.