In relation to academics, artificial intelligence can be considered a controversial topic. AI in academics can run into problems when dealing with the topic of academic honesty, making its use in schoolwork troubling. On the other hand, AI can be useful to generate notes or ideas when relating to school. Should schools encourage students to use AI?
AI can do a lot, it can automate previously impossible knowledge-based tasks, and handle complex tasks, allowing for enhanced efficiency. Allowing students to use AI can aid students to finish work at an improved rate instead of spending hours on end staying stuck on something just because their mind isn’t in the right place. If used properly AI can be a useful tool in academics, students just need to stay academically honest and not let laziness get the best of them to let AI do their work for them.
When looking into a classroom’s AI policies, it is seen as an academic tool rather than a way to write for students. Instead of replacing the work students are assigned to do, AI is used to complement learning, going hand in hand with students’ minds and work. But all AI usage must be permitted by the teacher. These class policies for AI are solid, also including consequences for being academically dishonest. More classes, not only here at Northridge Academy High School, but also classes all over the globe should implement their own AI policies, like this one, without fully restricting the use of academic AI usage.
An example of an ethical way to use AI with school work is to use it as some sort of tutor to explain topics that students don’t understand. Students can create a prompt like, “Give an example of how to divide quadratic equations and explain.” and the AI will respond with a reasonably accurate response almost all the time. Students can also use it to brainstorm ideas for an article to make the writing process easier. Prompts like, “Generate ideas for an argumentative essay about school fights.”
Students can essentially use AI to do anything for them; they would just need to find the right AI bot, but this runs into the problem of the ethical use of AI, since if it can essentially do anything for them it will. This includes writing full essays for them, doing full packets of classwork/homework for them, and more. Those who do not use AI for the correct purpose in the end are hurting themselves as they won’t learn anything.
After polling students on the usage of AI, of those we polled, half of students use AI most of the time for school, and the other half use AI only sometimes for school. Out of all of those students most of them say that they only use AI to simply aid them in finishing their school work. This comes to show that when using AI students seem to use it hand in hand with their own work rather than a substitute for doing their work. But we also have to account for the fact that these results can be invalid due to students not being completely honest.
Senior, Ethan Riley Eleco, provided a great perspective on the topic of AI, as he stated, “Although I see how disruptive and unethical the use of AI can be, it can also be utilized as a tool to assist students in the academics. But this would be the responsibility of the student to maintain their academic honesty. Instead of simply letting AI tools do the work for you, it would be very beneficial to instead use it to help you improve in a variety of subjects or topics.” When taking this opinion into consideration, supervised AI usage should not have any problems, as students do not have to take up the responsibility of becoming academically honest; rather, it is up to the teacher to make sure the usage of AI is not being abused. But a teacher will not always be there to supervise the usage of AI, that is when students must take up the responsibility of being academically honest. Taking into account the factors of disruptive and unethical use, Eleco concludes that it is beneficial to use AI in school, especially to improve as a student, as long as AI isn’t being abused.
How can teachers make sure that AI is not abused without their own supervision? To encourage the ethical use of AI in school work, schools can incorporate extensive AI detectors and also equal consequences if caught with the unethical use of AI. Or even having students participate in some sort of ethical AI use workshop in class.
As a person who has used AI, sometimes it can be effortless to get away with AI-generated work, especially when students have access to AI humanizers and paraphrasing tools. Doing all of this work to go under the radar of AI detectors can sometimes take as long, if not longer, than just simply writing the article without AI. So, in the end, is it really worth the trouble? Definitely not, as using AI unethically does not allow students to learn better, as opposed to the ethical use of AI.
AI can be an amazing tool in school, being able to do so much that would otherwise take a significant amount of time. In the end, it is really up to our educators if they choose to use AI for academics, although it may have some unintended downsides, it is a great tool if used properly. Implementing AI in the classroom is a great concept, and after looking into it, it really should be looked up upon more, as classes all over the world can learn to implement it.
