Ever since artificial intelligence, or AI, was discovered by many people, especially students, it has become the most used resource in school. It has become more popular than other apps such as Photomath, MathWay, Gauth, and many other platforms. But the question is, is AI for the best or the worst?
ChatGPT was the first platform to be used for school work and questions related to any school topic. At first, we would often see it in any other app where we could get simple answers, but then after using it more often and getting detailed answers, more people were interested in this app, and even adults started to use this app. ChatGPT is not only used to get answers for school work, but it also gives advice whenever you ask something, and it would also give you good tips for anything like a career, a job, and even on how to learn to do something. Most of the time, depending on the question you ask, you get detailed answers.
After a while, AI was now something everyone would either suggest or use daily. At least 77% of America’s population uses AI or somehow have it on their devices a certain way. Most of the apps we use now have AI. All the questions being asked on Google now always give you a more specific and detailed answer, also stating that it was “based on an AI overview”.
Of course, people’s first guess was that AI is used more often in school and although it is true, half of the students think that AI is good when it comes to seeing it as an answer key.
“I believe that AI is helpful because it searches from multiple sources to get the most accurate and detailed answers, which is why I use it often. Furthermore, I would not encourage other people to use it because even though it does help, it can also create laziness and no effort into pursuing a career because most of the work you have completed was because of AI.” junior Ayame Kuroda said.
While most of the students use AI for other purposes, there are still a few of them who can see it as a good thing when they want to learn. Even some teachers can use AI but not everyone has the same opinion. Some teachers could use them to actually help with their lesson plans while a few, hopefully, none, may use them to do the work for them.
“I think AI is helpful in different ways. It can be taken advantage of but it is helpful for kids that don’t understand things on quizzes or just regular assignments. They can ask AI with an easy answer or an upper-level answer so I think it’s a good thing, but then again it can’t be taken advantage of. I would encourage people to use it more as long as it’s not for cheating or getting answers easy, but as for helping students understand and learn.” junior Rosa Schroder said.
“I think AI is harmful to our creative process and critical thinking process because we lose the ability to critically analyze and think about a topic or subject when we want the easy way out of just searching for the answers. I wouldn’t encourage students to use it because they lose the ability to think for themselves. Although, I have used AI mostly to check if any of my students have used AI and sometimes used it for writing prompts whenever I was struggling to create ACT writing prompts.” said English teacher Mrs. Monica Hickman.
Many teachers believe that AI is used to get easy answers and think that it could be a bad influence on students these days, but a few teachers like Sociology teacher Ms. Jessica Skelly views it from another perspective.
“I think if we can adapt to AI and use it positively then it can be helpful. I think that as long as we don’t rely on it for everything or take it at face value then it wouldn’t be so bad. I believe we can use it to enhance our knowledge-building and encourage people to use it positively. I started using AI outside of school because that’s when I got to ask AI to help me search for specific details that I need or want to know.” said Skelly.
Having different opinions and points of view from teachers and students leaves someone thinking about whether AI is helpful or harmful. While many think differently, it appears that AI is both helpful and harmful because it helps you learn what you did wrong and gives you step-by-step instructions on how to do something or how to start on something. It can be harmful because they can take advantage of it and use it for everything instead of trying. But at the end of the day, people will view it from different perspectives and use it for different purposes.
