There’s a version of this conversation happening mostly between people who aren’t in vet school right now.
School deans, practice owners, conference speakers, and others in vet med are debating what artificial intelligence (AI) means for the profession, whether students are using it too much, and whether it undermines learning. And somewhere in there are the actual students—the ones about to graduate into this thing—who seldom, if ever, get asked for their thoughts.
So here’s my honest take, a student’s perspective, from the inside.
What AI is actually doing for me in vet school
I genuinely don’t know where I’d be without AI. I came into Cornell knowing I learn better through cases and stories than passive reading, and AI let me build a study system around that from day one.
Here’s how it works for me. I feed my notes and class materials in as the knowledge base, and then I tell it to stay within those constraints. Then I have it teach me the material back. Synthesize it, explain it in a way that actually sticks. Once I get through a section, it gives me case-based short-answer and multiple choice questions that I can answer by speaking out my thoughts. From there, the system will evaluate my current state and tell me what I got right, where I’m off, and why. Then it finds the gaps and adjusts how it teaches the next section based on what I missed. After I’m through all the material, full practice exam.
Then again… Section by section. Cumulative. Everything gets layered back together.
On top of that, I use spaced repetition through RemNote, and I have AI build flashcards from what I got wrong along with the baseline information I need to understand the bigger picture.
Is that how my professors designed the curriculum to be studied? Probably not. But it’s the most efficient and effective thing I’ve done for learning, and my opportunities reflect that.
And Cornell isn’t the only school where this is happening. Sydni Fontenot, a third year vet student at Colorado State University (CSU), described a program that’s actually built AI into the curriculum from the start:
“The program encourages us to use AI in a way that makes life easier; so much so that we had a full part of our orientation dedicated to teaching us how we can use it,” Sydni explained. “Currently, students at our veterinary teaching hospital can use AI as a study tool to help make practice test materials, aid in scribing medical notes, and use it during client interactions to help take notes.”
It’s a powerful statement that CSU is making when they decided that they wouldn’t just leave students to figure it out and instead make it part of day one.
That’s what it looks like when a school thinks and executed upon intentional integration.
From talking to classmates at veterinary schools around the world, this isn’t unique to me—basically everyone is using AI in some form now. The question stopped being “should I use it?” a while ago. It’s now just, “how should I use it?”
If it is for their medical charting, that is fine. But I would not like my veterinarian to be using AI to make medical decisions.Ashley Sepulveda
Pet Owner
What I think AI is going to do for the profession
Most of the AI tools making noise in vet med right now are scribes and documentation assistants. Genuinely useful, but still just a surface layer.
The real aspect that gets overlooked is how much of a veterinarian’s brain goes toward record-keeping, charting, and other administrative tasks that have nothing to do with actually practicing medicine. If AI keeps taking that off our plates, we get that bandwidth back.
Beyond documentation, here are some of the things that I think are coming.
Optimized patient care. Pattern recognition at scale could mean surfacing differentials faster, flagging drug interactions, and otherwise catching what a single vet might miss in a long day. AI-assisted imaging analysis is already in early development and has real potential here.
Improved client compliance and communication. AI-powered education, follow-up, and simplified explanations could actually move the needle in this area. Pet owners are already starting to use AI on their own—the profession should be ahead of that curve, not reacting to it.
Streamlined practice operations. Scheduling, financial modeling, human resources—most vets graduate with no training in any of this, but AI can help fill that gap.
Help alleviating the vet shortage. If AI handles more throughput, one vet can do what used to take more.
The shift that I actually want to see is educators treating AI like a tool that students need to learn to use responsibly—the same way we learned anesthesia machines or PubMed.
The part I hope schools take seriously
A lot of faculty and academic leadership are still in a defensive posture about AI. For example, academic integrity concerns are real. But most schools have either banned AI or said nothing, which means that we students are using it anyway, with zero guidance on how to do it well.
The shift that I actually want to see is educators treating AI like a tool that students need to learn to use responsibly—the same way we learned anesthesia machines or PubMed. Teach us what it’s good at, where it fails, such as when it confidently gives you wrong information.
And Sydni revealed something that I think a lot of students would echo if they were being honest:
“I guess I’m not all the way sure what its full capabilities are as it pertains to the veterinary profession—so any new information is helpful, in my opinion,” she said.
That’s from a student at a school actively doing this well, yet she still has knowledge gaps regarding the potential of AI. That tells you something about how much room there is for AI to grow across the profession.
And the clients we’re going to serve are already forming opinions. Ashley Sepulveda, a pet owner, told me she already uses AI to help determine if her pet needs emergent care. But she was clear on where her trust ends:
“If it is for their medical charting, that is fine,” she said. “But I would not like my veterinarian to be using AI to make medical decisions.”
That’s not a fringe view. That’s going to be a common one, and it’s a fair one. The profession needs to be able to articulate that distinction clearly—and that starts in school.
On the new grad side, Margaret Whittington, DVM, uses AI daily for records review and recap, and is actively hoping to see it expand into voice features and imaging analysis in her workflow. The use cases are real. The appetite is there.
What it does beyond the clinic
Many veterinary professionals are getting into content creation now more than ever. The beautiful reality of AI is that it has drastically lowered the barrier to getting there: proofreading, brainstorming, repurposing a long piece into shorter formats.
Even on the business side, it’s super useful for bouncing ideas, research, and working through ownership scenarios, which is stuff that would normally take an MBA or years of figuring it out the hard way.
The honest bottom line
AI is not replacing veterinarians or veterinary professionals. Not the clinical judgment, not the physical exam, not the relationship with the client—and honestly, clients like Ashley are counting on that distinction being honored.
But it truly will keep changing how we spend our time, evolving how we learn, and elevating the level at which we run businesses. The real question is whether we’re going to be intentional about how we teach it, use it, and build around it.
Jeremiah Pouncy is a DVM student at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, Class of 2027.
Photo credit: © FG Trade via Getty Images Plus
Source : https://www.aaha.org/trends-magazine/publications/opinion-how-veterinary-students-actually-feel-about-ai/
Disclaimer: Trends content is meant to inform, educate, and inspire by providing an array of diverse viewpoints. Any content published should not be viewed as an official stance, position, or endorsement by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) or its Board of Directors.
