Artificial Intelligence (AI) has sparked widespread discussion and concern about its appropriate applications, particularly in education. The emergence of AI chatbots has introduced new ways of using the technology, accompanied by increased anxiety about its effects on academic environments.
More assignments that teachers give to students have been digitized over the years. Most high school students in the modern day can agree that pen and paper school is, in most cases, nearly extinct. The Federal Communications Commission reported in 2019 that around 70% of teachers assigned digital homework that required connection to broadband internet. This shift towards digital homework and classwork assignments has enabled students to more easily incorporate uses of AI into their work. In the past, the use of AI may have been more difficult in trying to apply it to pen and paper assignments. In modern day digital assignments, it’s a lot easier.
ChatGPT, developed and released in 2022 by OpenAI, is a leading chatbot, often favored by students to complete work. It can be asked a prompt and generate descriptive and accurate answers based on its current GPT-4o large language model. The ease of access to it has also sparked its use among students. It can easily be accessed for free by simply using it at its web address. But it can also be downloaded as a mobile app, allowing for even easier and more convenient access.
Many students have clearly turned to the use of AI for homework and other assignments due to its easy access and accurate answers. Much less work has to be done and better answers than a student could usually come up with are given. All of this inflated use has not fallen on deaf ears with teachers, though. A recent 2024 Buzzfeed article by Julia Corrigan asking its community about AI’s impact on the classroom from the perspective of teachers, showed a trend in teachers wising up to students’ use of it.
One response given reads, “Spanish teacher here. With the amount of cheating from using translators and essay writers only growing exponentially, I have all but gotten rid of technology in my class. Project? Handwritten, all work done in class. Quiz? On paper. Interpretive test? All the Chromebooks go on the counter, where students can’t access them” (Corrigan).
Views from some teachers see AI’s use as a negative as well. Not simply from the fact that students are cheating their way out of completing assignments, but because of its social and educational effect on the students using it.
Another reply reads, “AI has already taken away the ability to see what the students are actually capable of because they won’t put in real effort. They’re putting in more effort to find ways to do as little as possible than if they just put the effort into writing. This is only going to get worse. It amazes me that students don’t know what a comma is in middle school” (Corrigan).
Other responses given in the post point to AI’s ethicalness being shaky, as nothing it generates is actually original. When AI is used it essentially gathers information from all over the internet, compiling and writing it up for you. This means that the level of research and individual thought, and education, of the topic given won’t exist anymore.
It could bring up the argument that we could see kids going through school now, who use more AI, be less educated and receptive to information as past generations have been, as they don’t have to do the thinking, research, and learning that they would otherwise. While AI can be useful and definitely makes work a lot easier, heavy reliance on AI could result in a generation of slower thinkers with diminished problem-solving skills.
AI undeniably simplifies tasks, but its impact on education raises questions about its role in fostering genuine learning. If students submit answers generated by AI without processing the content themselves, they risk losing the ability to think deeply and develop essential skills. Teachers, whose goal is to facilitate learning, see AI as a barrier rather than a tool for intellectual growth.
The National Library of Medicine reflected on the impact of AI on cognitive health, quoting reduced mental engagement and saying, “When AI systems take over cognitive tasks, individuals may experience a decrease in mental engagement and stimulation. The lack of active cognitive participation can lead to a decline in critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity.”
A risk for loss of memory capacity and attention and focus issues arising from frequent AI use were also quoted. These concerns may be noted by teachers who fear the use of AI in their classroom so much. It might give another viewpoint into the sometimes extreme measures taken to reduce the use of AI in schools because they believe that AI does not help students learn, it only gives them easy and quick answers without requiring them to think deeply about what is being asked of them.
Some might think it will result in dire consequences for the development of young students. Some might think it will not, and encourage the use of AI. Either way, AI is here, easily accessible, and prevalent, and there is nothing that can stop that at this point. Going forward, we can predict that students will use AI more and more frequently as it will likely become more and more untraceable in student work. This means that the teachers that will want to prevent it will need to come up with innovative new solutions to weeding AI out, and discouraging it. They will have to stay updated with AI’s new innovations, likely putting even more stress on them as educators.
Looking ahead, balancing AI’s potential benefits with its risks will be critical. Schools may integrate AI tools for sanctioned uses, as demonstrated by NPHS’s adoption of MagicSchoolAI, to maintain a productive learning environment.