LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic of conversation, especially in recent months. Many people, especially those in the education field, have been concerned about how AI will affect the time, effort and quality of learning.
Written projects, such as essays, have been a major concern with plagiarism using AI, specifically an open-source AI called ChatGPT. As students can input the prompt and guidelines, the website will automatically generate the full response in a matter of seconds. Students can also get around the AI detectors by asking the site to ‘humanize’ the writing style or edit it slightly to their taste. This method has made it increasingly difficult to pinpoint when and where AI is used.
The education department has encountered similar issues before, mainly when calculators and computers became more common tools for the average student. Professors and teachers in high schools and middle schools across the U.S. were unsure if students would be able to do heavy math by hand or if they would become completely reliant on calculators. While today’s students may not be able to perform such complicated mathematics, they don’t need it with the current technology available. Calculators have opened a lot of opportunities for STEM, and students have adjusted to using them as a tool rather than a crutch.
“I definitely see [AI] being used in the future. I think AI will revolutionize the world like the internet did,” Mr. Grant, a Computer Science teacher at Los Alamitos High School, said.
Because AI is so new and accessible to everyone, the temptation to have it produce students’ work for them is very difficult to overcome. There has been discourse about writing software adding features to detect when AI has been copied and pasted into a document so that teachers and professors can see the history of the document.
Despite all the negatives, AI has a lot of advantages that can benefit both students and adults in their work.
“AI does a great job of pulling information from multiple sources so we’re able to look at a wider variety at once,” Mr. Grant said.
Many teachers at LAHS notice a rapid increase in students cheating with AI. This has led to some classrooms implementing the rule that all essays and projects must be written solely in class with careful watch by the instructors.
“I have noticed it in my classes. Sometimes it’s not even for school; some students use it for entertainment purposes. My problem with it is when students are using it to create things that they take credit for, almost like plagiarising it, and also an overreliance on it and not seeking other input,” Mr. Grant said.
In short, as long as the coming generations adjust and start to utilize artificial intelligence as an ethical resource for knowledge instead of just an easy way out, artificial intelligence could change the world for the better.
