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Artificial intelligence has been around since the 1940s, but it’s now being used more than ever in 2023. Let’s first quickly define this term; AI is a field that combines both computer science and robust data sets in order to solve problems. The very first AI program that was successfully written was in 1951 by Christopher Strachy, which later led to his promotion as the director of the Programming Research Group at Oxford University.

Now that we’re in 2023, technology has advanced to the point where artificial intelligence can now search the internet and write essays for anyone in a matter of seconds with just a click of a button. As a result, academic dishonesty is now more prevalent than ever, and it’s now harder to instill in students the importance of academic integrity. The rise in the use of AI was a result of the recent pandemic wherein, due to online classes, teachers and professors have no means of physically watching over and guiding their students in writing essays, thus resulting in them finding creative ways to cheat in their tests and assignments.

This upsurge of AI being used in academia is very troubling because of how easy it is to use and access. Softwares like ChatGPT or Quillbot are just some platforms that are easily accessible to everyone. This resulted in educators struggling to determine whether or not these tasks were completed with the help of programs like these. Although the works being created by AI are not considered to be plagiarism, it’s still a form of cheating because the work wasn't made by you. Experts suggest that universities should now be focused on changing the structure of assessments to be more evidence-based or to be orally created to further reduce the use of AI (Wang, 2023).

Although a lot of people consider AI a helpful tool, it still poses disadvantages to students who often use it. According to a study conducted by J. Lynch in 2017, there are four main problems caused by constant reliance on AI. One example of this is that students tend to measure the wrong things. When data is collected by a program, a student’s learning is considered indirect, inauthentic, and lacking in validity and reliability. These softwares also often use poor methods in teaching, wherein the data found is considered to be only collectible and not meaningful. Swapping effect for efficiency is considered to be another disadvantage of using AI in education. Going back to the pandemic, online classes were a big adjustment for everyone. The daily routine of listening to face-to-face teaching was gone, which resulted in new forms of teaching being used and invented. When I was in the Ateneo de Manila Junior High School, the software Cerebry was used as a new way to teach formulas in math. This new way of teaching was proven ineffective due to students, including myself, having a harder and longer time understanding these lessons. This event immediately falls under this category of disadvantages, where face-to-face learning is still considered to be a superior form of teaching due to it being more meaningful and interactive compared to AI education. 

Due to the fast evolution of technology, artificial intelligence is now more prevalent than ever, and it’s safe to say that it won’t go anywhere anytime soon. Instead of trying to eradicate and fully prevent the use of AI in universities, they must find a way to adapt to this situation and, at the same time, promote the advantages and importance of academic integrity.