Technology Tips and Tricks

AI In Education 

By: Nathan Mills & Martin TovarSerrano 

Artificial Intelligence. You hear a lot about it these days. It’s going to take your job from you, it’s going to take over the world, it’s going to kill all of us. You know, fun stuff like that. However, have you ever stopped to think about how AI will be used in education? What if it already is? EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER! 

Before we move into the topic, let’s first define what Artificial Intelligence is. In the words of Wikipedia, “Artificial Intelligence, in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems.” British computer scientist, Alan Turning, thought of Artificial Intelligence all the way back in 1950, when he wrote, “I propose to consider the question ‘can machines think’?” This question opened up a whole other can of worms, as it raised the question: “What does it mean to ‘think’?” So, Turning revised his question, and asked whether or not machines could exhibit intelligent behavior. It is impossible to know whether or not machines can ‘think’, but it does seem as if they can exhibit intelligent behavior. 

Now you may be wondering, “How does his high level philosophy and science apply to education?” The answer is that it applies a lot. There are many websites that use artificial intelligence that students can use. The first website that comes to mind is ChatGPT, where you can tell the computer to write something about a topic, and it will do so for you. There are other AI resources like this too, such as Meta AI and Snapchat AI, each with various levels of trustworthiness in their writing. These sites are fun to use when your sitting around at home, but I wouldn’t advise using them, as copying and pasting things directly from AI, is plagiarism, since you are still stealing someone else’s work, and passing it off as you own, even thought that “someone else” isn’t human. 

There are also websites that use AI, and won’t get you in trouble for plagiarism. In fact, they will actually help your education. The first website that comes to mind is Duolingo: the website where a green bird teaches you languages, and makes you feel bad about yourself if you skip a day of learning. Duolingo’s language courses are designed by real people, who speak the language in question. However, Duolingo also uses AI (which it calls “BirdBrain”) to set the difficulty level of the courses according to the user’s ability. Another website that comes to mind, whose AI may be more obvious, is “Hello History” an app that allows you to to chat with various historical figures, and ask them questions as to why they made certain decisions, how they thought of a certain invention, etc. You can research this information without the app, but the app helps it seem a lot more real, as you’re not reading secondary sources in the third person. Instead, you can get in the mind of the historical figure ‘themselves’ and why they did something. Though of course, the app has its limitations, as it can not say things that weren’t written down or recorded. There are other apps/websites that allow you to chat in a similar way, though with different focuses like cartoon or Marvel characters. 

Now let’s see what teachers can do with AI. ChatGPT was already mentioned, as was the fact that using it is plagiarism. You may think that teachers will never find out if you plagiarized an assignment, but you’d be wrong. One way teachers can find out if you used plagiarism is if your tone changes in your writing, and if you write in a way that is not your usual style. However, that is just regular intelligence. There is a way for teachers to check for plagiarism using AI though, actually a few. One of which is Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker. You can copy and paste any document into it, and it will tell you whether or not plagiarism was used. Teachers can also use AI for more positive things though, like the website Quizizz. Its AI allows teachers to import lesson material into it, and it will create questions based on the material. If they need to, they can also translate the quiz into another language, or even write the questions in a certain genre or style. For instance, they could commission a quiz written as if it were written by Shakespeare, so instead of asking: ‘What are the pros and cons of using fossil fuels?’ The quiz will ask ‘To use fossil fuels or to not use fossil fuels? That is the question.’ It may not be that exact wording, but you get the point. 

As you can see, Artificial Intelligence can have a positive impact on student’s learning, and the teachers as well. However, Artificial Intelligence does have some bad sides, and it’s important that all students don’t abuse it, and use it to write things for them. Instead, they should use AI to help them achieve their goals, not do it for them.