By Kira Rich
Editorial Editor
Editorial
AI may be banned from certain classrooms, but students won’t be able to ban it from their futures.
Artificial intelligence has been so normalized online to the point it’s rare if you don’t come across it in some form. It can write, make art, answer questions, alter images or videos, and even do homework. Naturally the wide range of capabilities that Artificial intelligence possesses has made a lot of educators nervous.
Some professors have taken it upon themselves to ban AI from their classrooms completely. Others allow it for certain assignments or to be used in certain processes and some educators even use it themselves. Truthfully, both reactions make sense.
AI as a tool can definitely be helpful. For example, a student that may be struggling with a topic can ask an AI chat box to explain it in a different way. It can generate practice questions, assist in brainstorming, or help a student figure out where to start on an assignment. For professors, it can help with lesson planning, creating activities, or finding different ways to explain a complex topic.
But there is an obvious downside: AI can also do the work for you.
There is a huge difference between asking AI to explain a concept to you that you’re struggling with and asking it to write your paper. One helps you learn while the other is simply just a shortcut to get by.
There are additional issues as well. AI can confidently give you incorrect information. AI is more of a search engine that pulls all information relevant to that source, however it is not a fact checker. Students may not always know what information they can trust, and there are still a multitude of questions concerning privacy, copyright, and how much personal information people should load into these systems.
So, yes, there are good reasons for professors to put limits on AI.
But banning something does not necessarily teach students how to use it.
At Winthrop, professors are expected to explain their AI policies in their syllabi, while individual instructors decide how AI can or cannot be used in their classes. Which means students may have one class where utilizing ChatGPT is completely acceptable while the next prohibits it.
That makes understanding AI even more important.
Understanding AI does not mean teaching students how to get ChatGPT to do their work for them.
AI literacy could be as simple as learning how generative AI works, why it sometimes fills in the gaps with incorrect information, how bias can affect its answers, and how to effectively fact check the information it gives you. It could also mean defining when it is an appropriate time to use AI and when it completely defeats the purpose of an assignment.
It could also mean talking about what AI looks like outside of school.
AI outside the classroom is especially important because students are not going to graduate into a world where AI suddenly disappears. AI is already being used in fields like marketing, journalism, customer service, programming and design. The World Economic Forum has identified AI literacy as an increasingly important skill as artificial intelligence changes the workplace.
The technology is adapting quickly. The AI we see today could look completely different from what may be encountered in the next two to three years. Without jumping on it now the learning curve could be insane difficult to overcome. It is becoming less of a separate tool that people intentionally open and more of something built into everyday softwares and services that are regularly used.
That makes the conversation around AI in schools bigger than whether students should be allowed to use ChatGPT on an essay.
Without a doubt, students should still learn how to write without AI. They should still learn how to research, solve problems and think through difficult questions by themselves. There is value in struggling with an assignment instead of immediately asking a chatbot for the answer.
At the same time, students should understand the inter-workings of the technology around them rather than have the knowledge repressed.
Schools already teach students how to ethically seek out credible sources, spot misinformation online, and apply critical thinking skills to what they see online. AI deserves the same amount of attention.
The goal shouldn’t be to convince students that AI is good or bad. It should be to make sure they understand what they are dealing with.
Students don’t need to be taught not to use AI but instead have awareness of its increasing capabilities as well as being able to apply their critical thinking skills.
