Many students use AIs as a time-saving “cheat sheet” for school. Does it improve their education or make it worse?
AI, which stands for “artificial intelligence”, is a technological program that can be used to interact with people and instantly produce answers to any question or prompt. AI can be used to find easy resources and ideal responses to any assignment prompts or questions.
Some students prefer to use AI because it’s faster and easier. Some students only copy and paste answers produced by AI, which doesn’t encourage creativity. Others use it as a fast information resource to figure out their homework problems.
There is no data on an average amount of high school students that use AI. The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has blocked AI websites, such as ChatGPT.
David De los Angeles, senior, said he uses ChatGPT. He said,“I mainly use it to check that my answers are correct or sometimes formatting. It could also be helpful for that.”
When he was asked if he thinks students rely too much on AI, De los Angeles believes that many students may depend on it more in the future.
Ms.Trezza, an Algebra I and II teacher, said, ”I don’t think they’re benefiting if they’re just using the answers from those programs. I think the benefit is when you use the program if you’re really stuck, and then you learn from the steps that it gives you and you try to do the next one on your own.”
AI makes teachers’ jobs harder because they don’t know their students’ strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, teachers can’t correct students and teach them if they don’t know what their students need help with.
ENL teacher, Ms. Piatkowski said, “I feel like it harms them more. …if you give us something that’s maybe not great, like writing wise, at least we could help you learn and become better writers. I feel like AI is kind of becoming a way where students are getting, in the moment, better grades, but it’s not helping them long-term.”
Students don’t actually learn any content or practice the skills they’re required to use if they use AI for most of their assignments. Copying and pasting answers from AI websites stop students from learning the mechanics behind the work or how to properly construct responses. Students aren’t proving that they are learning and retaining the information their teachers give them through their AI generated work.
In English class, teachers worry that students’ creativity is blocked because they aren’t using their own ideas and imagination. With the use of AI, students don’t get to display their knowledge on a topic or express themselves and their ideas.
AI is slowly becoming more relied on to the point that our future employees may not have any actual knowledge of their prospective work fields.
