AI Use in School

As life goes on and our society keeps making advancements, you can’t help but wonder if it is worth it. The line between improvement and obstruction is fading right before our eyes. One so-called advancement is artificial intelligence. 

Something that has sparked controversy is whether AI should be used in schools. Though many kids use AI, AI shouldn’t be used in an educational setting because it’ll end up doing more harm than good. According to the United Nations University, “AI models are only as good as the data they are trained on.” Meaning AI itself isn’t reliable. It can’t create new ideas or thoughts; it can only recycle old ones. Unlike humans, AI is limited. There is also a moral issue with AI use. School is a space where people have to think for themselves; taking that away from students means taking away something important. Especially when it comes to creative spaces like literacy and art, using AI defeats the whole purpose of the classes. Literacy classes are about being able to understand and analyze the meaning of a piece of literature while also being able to write it yourself. If that can’t be done, it doesn’t matter because the skills taught haven’t been learned. One student says, “I think it can be helpful in a lot of ways, but overall we would be better off without it because we are losing skills we used to have.” Teachers here will say the same, physics teacher Mr. Lebold says, “Sometimes AI gets questions wrong in physics, but in my class, it's a good way of checking your work, but it shouldn't be used to do work.” 

However, the blame can’t be placed entirely on the scholar. It should be recognized that some teachers also use AI. In my judgement, teachers shouldn’t be allowed to use AI at school, whether it be for grading or for teaching. If an educator uses AI to teach their students, it allows students to question the educator's academic authority over them. If the expectation of what a teacher is should be lowered to such a standard, then the teacher is no better than the student. Using AI to grade papers or math equations removes the personal feedback students require in order to thrive. When an educator finds something wrong with a student’s work or a flaw in their skills, it’s their job to show students how to improve. As a student, if I found out my teacher was using AI to provide me feedback, not only would it be hypocritical, but I wouldn’t be getting the proper Masterman-level education that is deserved.

  AI is something already being used in other schools, and there is no escaping it. Though AI has many flaws, AI will probably be used in Masterman later on, and people will have to use it whether they want to or not. When calculators were introduced in school, people were against them. Eventually, people continued to use calculators in school, and math got harder. That is why I predict something similar will happen. It will be used– in moderation– and school work will demand more from students.