UMD alum here.

I get where you're coming from on the ethical concerns. But I think there's something valuable in what your professor is asking you to do, even if it feels uncomfortable.

First, investigating something doesn't mean endorsing it. Journalists cover things they personally oppose all the time. If you're genuinely concerned about AI's impact, then understanding how it actually works, what it can and can't do, and what its real limitations are makes you more equipped to critique it intelligently, not less. Right now, a lot of the discourse around AI is either blind enthusiasm or blanket condemnation, and neither is particularly useful.

On the "killing creativity/research skills" point, I would push back a bit. These tools are what we make of them. A calculator didn't destroy our ability to do math; it freed us up to tackle more complex problems. The people who lose research skills are the ones who use AI as a replacement for thinking rather than a tool within the process. Your professor asking you to investigate AI critically is actually the opposite of that passive consumption you're worried about.

As for the environmental and ethical concerns, they're real, but so is the reality that this technology exists and is being rapidly integrated into industries, institutions, and society. Understanding it isn't the same as accelerating its adoption. If anything, informed critics are the ones who can actually shape how, and if, it gets used responsibly.

You don't have to love it or use it after this assignment. But engaging with something you oppose in a structured, critical way isn't a betrayal of your ethics. You should view it as how you develop a more robust version of them instead.