How AI [Artificial Intelligence] Hurts Trust Between Teachers and Students

Imagine this…an assignment is due tomorrow and you haven’t started it. In a moment of laziness (and fear of a failing grade) you use what’s available, so ChatGPT or any AI writing platform immediately pops into your head. After prompting its system, your chosen program writes what you feel is an almost perfect essay; and it’s done in a matter of seconds. You submit it without thinking of the consequences, whether or not a teacher finds out. Days pass, and you finally receive a grade for your essay: and it’s a failing grade. When you get to class the next day, you approach your teacher to ask what went wrong and the teacher quickly says “you clearly used AI software to write your essay.” From this point on, you have lost the trust of your teacher and stand to lose the trust of many more if you continue using AI. 

The University of Illinois Chicago defines AI or Artificial Intelligence as “a branch of computer science that aims to create machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.” AI is used in a lot of different ways, such as Tesla and its self-driving cars, maps and navigation, facial detection and recognition software, text editors and autocorrect, search engines and recommendation algorithms, chatbots, digital assistants, social media, and E-payments all use AI to perform their duties. AI is basically used in many aspects of our technological world, whether it is inside or outside school. In an educational setting, AI is almost exclusively used as a “cheat tool” that does your writing and thinking for you. 

This is where the problem lies. 

Almost every day, teachers deal with the use of AI inside their classrooms from simple assignments to full on essays where it is written and done for them. Through this use of AI, many teachers have tried and found ways to block and find out how an assignment can be interpreted or seen as written by AI. This mis-usage has caused many teachers to lose trust in their students because if a piece of writing is too good, it may be seen as AI-generated, yet on the other hand, if it is too simple, it can be seen as being “dumbed-down” to make it seem like AI wasn’t used. In a Forbes.com article titled, “Artificial Intelligence In Education: Teachers’ Opinions On AI In The Classroom,” it talks about how teachers worry endlessly about cheating with the use of AI, and how it has been discovered that about 64% of the AI cheating methods used are assignments that require an essay, which is obviously a huge problem for English teachers. On the other hand, there have also been teachers who have said that AI can be used to their own advantage by using it to spot AI-written assignments.

In the long run, students are heavily affected by the use of AI software. They are heavily affected because students who use it to cheat and get caught will most likely cause any teacher to mistrust anyone else in the class, even those who have never used AI software. Again, the use of AI has made it where trust between teachers and students will be really difficult because of the worry of it also being used in the classroom. 

If used correctly, AI can be the best teacher as well as a tool to further develop your understanding and level of knowledge. If AI was to be used in and out of school, the best way to use it would be for tips and pointers, maybe even helping you understand a subject or topic better. As said in an article by John Spencer called “The Future of Writing in a World of Artificial Intelligence” it talks about how a professor was not worried about AI because they plan lessons around it so that the students will learn and think by themselves. In the article, he says, “When I realized students could just download whole essays, I started requiring students to do pre-writing that they turned in. I [also] changed to high-interest prompts that you couldn’t find online. Now I see that ChatGPT can generate responses to those high-interest prompts and I’m going to think hard about how treat AI as a tool.” This shows that not all professors, and maybe even teachers, may view AI software as something that isn’t just for cheating and doing the work for someone, but may also be able to be used as something that helps them develop better lessons or more engaging, clear writing prompts.

AI should be able to be used, but in a way that helps and doesn’t do the work for you. Most of the ways it is used currently is by just letting the AI bots do the work and letting it write your entire essay for you. I get it, maybe you don’t have the time for the assignment, or maybe you just didn’t want to do it; however it doesn’t mean it is right [to use]. AI should not be used, in any form, to do your work, give you answers, cite evidence, or analyze pieces of writing for you. All work should be done in your own words and with your own thoughts. 

AI devices have become a major part of our lives in this day and age, so much so that it is being used inside school to do assignments. While using AI devices to do your work is bad on many levels, it can actually give you brainstorming ideas or even tips of what to think about; here, you’d be using AI software as a tool to help elevate your learning instead of stunting and stopping your growth in the pursuit of knowledge. 

Though right now it is difficult to imagine, eventually teachers should consider implementing AI into their teaching in such a way that it can help students learn and understand instead of just allowing the software to outright do the work for students.