A.I. Two simple vowels. When put together, they represent one of the most significant aspects of our changing world: artificial intelligence. It’s not surprising that such an expansive resource was accepted into schools like ours so quickly. AI can summarize text, write essays, give health tips, generate images in seconds and has innumerable other uses. But with great power comes great responsibility, and as of now, most students are being less than responsible. Study.com conducted a survey with 100 educators and 1,000 students and found that over 89% of students used ChatGPT on a homework assignment at some point and 53% had it write an essay for them.
AI has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until just recently that the power of AI was available to everyone in an easily accessible form with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Teachers at North are divided, says principal Jay Wachtel.
“Some hate it, they don’t want it to exist at all, or they don’t want any use, and others are, like, really open-minded,” Wachtel said.
One thing is clear, though—AI is going to keep showing up and become more helpful over time. The problem is that it’s becoming too helpful, doing the work that students are expected to do themselves. Allowing students to use such a powerful tool opens up a Pandora’s box of academic integrity violations. In Mr. Wachtel’s opinion,
“To not let kids have access to make their lives more efficient doesn’t seem fair or right.”
However, many students have anonymously admitted that they use AI daily to write essays, solve math problems, and do their homework for them already. They’re using it to make their lives a piece of cake, not to learn. I argue that it’s not fair or right to grant kids access to something that allows them to cheat so easily and leave those who actually try feeling as if their effort is not worth the time.
I’ve heard people comparing AI’s integration to that of the internet, but that’s a massive stretch. AI makes plagiarism look incredibly easy to detect. Many AI detectors are proven to be highly inaccurate and will likely be that way for a long time. AI development is a closed box, and unless AI companies allow people to look at the process it uses to come up with text, AI detection websites will have to race against rapidly changing models for the security of learning.
Banning AI on Chromebooks and taking away phones will not be enough. When students go home, they can pull out another device and copy text down from the AI. The best solution? Close reading. AI has a distinct voice. Even that’s not guaranteed to work, though.
How does the district go about preventing academic integrity on this scale? I’m not exactly sure. But if they don’t do something about this, a large generation of students will struggle to think deeply about topics and convey their thoughts effectively.
