Artificial intelligence (AI) programs have earned a lot of criticism for several reasons, including that they mine existing work without giving credit or (usually) getting permission, and that they are often used by people who want a finished product with minimal effort on their part.
However, one psychologist, giving a commencement speech at Penn Graduate School of Education, is calling on teachers to guide their students in the appropriate use of the programs, instead of banning them altogether.
Students Love To Use ChatGPT As A Shortcut
Whether in high school or college, students are easily tempted by an easy way out. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that college professors are bringing back the old “blue book” style of testing. That is to say, they’re handing out blank books for students to write in, instead of allowing work to be done and submitted electronically.
Allowing students to submit work that AI has generated means passing students who haven’t completed the job, and letting students graduate without having learned the material. When students get away with cheating, they are cheated out of the education every student deserves.
This also has harmful implications for students who aren’t cheating, as the AI detector programs that instructors use to scan assignments for such cheating produce a significant number of false positives, which teachers then pass on in the form of false accusations.
AI Is A Permanent Fixture
Legislation may eventually catch up with technology and establish rules governing what data AI is allowed to mine; however, the technology itself isn’t going away.
These programs will only improve at the tasks they perform. Currently, they sometimes experience laughably (or potentially dangerously) flawed attempts, such as when they attempt art and distort their hands badly, or when they accidentally instruct people to add glue to pizza and eat rocks. (Side note: no matter what any AI program tells you, please do not eat glue or rocks.)
Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and author, suggests that students should learn to use AI in effective and appropriate ways, as it’s likely to be a part of their adult lives.
How Should Students Use AI, Then?
In her commencement speech, Duckworth said that she consulted with chatbots to write her speech.
She also says that she used ChatGPT to help her understand a statistics question, by having a conversation with it in which she asked specific questions and used it to reach an understanding. Another use she says she’s made of AI programs is to improve her writing, making sentences clearer and more concise.
According to CNBC, one of Duckworth’s graduate students recently carried out a study in which participants used an AI bot to write cover letters, then wrote one on their own. The participants who practiced writing cover letters with AI first wrote better cover letters on their own than those who didn’t use the programs.
AI Could Be Incorporated Into Everything Our Kids Do
Already, AI is an integral part of many things we do. It’s been added to our grammar checking programs. It’s part of our social media experience. Even if you do a web search, an AI answer is at the top of the page.
There are high hopes for the positive impact of AI, such as enhancing the precision of surgical procedures, making travel safer, and automating some of the more tedious and repetitive tasks that humans find frustrating.
Future graduates will inevitably need to know how to effectively work with AI, inputting queries in a way that returns useful results. Telling current students not to use AI at all would be as inhibiting as telling kids who graduated in the last few decades not to use Google!
Duckworth Is Actively Researching Another Use Of Tech In Schools
As schools move increasingly toward policies that ban cell phones, Duckworth has set out to determine what policies would benefit schools and students the most.
She is currently conducting a survey to ask educators to share the policies their schools have in place and how they’re working. Writing in EdWeek, she argued that policymakers are putting rules into place with little or no input from educators.
“With mounting concerns about youth mental health and academic performance, we can no longer afford to guess which approaches work best. It’s time to let data, not just debate, guide this critical conversation.”
She hopes to collect responses from educators in every school in the country and build an accurate snapshot of all the policies currently in use, how firmly they are enforced, and exactly what is working.