When the topic of technology and AI is brought up it is impossible to avoid talking about writing tools AI provides. Grammarly was the first AI writing tool widely used and accepted across campus. The new rising popularity of ChatGPT brings a new wave of controversy as instead of being an AI with the sole use of fixing grammatical errors, ChatGPT allows users to completely write work for them. The rising usage and awareness of this technology brings with it new issues for students and teachers. With the use of ChatGPT students no longer need to think for themselves in their writing. Current ISB student Giovanni Crimi has similar opinions on the usage of ChatGPT. He says “I think the software is gonna completely change the world. It writes for you and you don’t actually learn.”
Teachers are going to have to start preparing for the reality that students will have full access to these AI tools. It is very safe to assume that the school is going to allow some usage of the tool. Some teachers such as Mr.Cohen designed a summative assessment around ChatGPT. The summative started with no question to be answered. Instead, the students needed to use the AI tool to create a question for them to be answered. This led to a wide variety of questions being produced and an equally wide range of project ideas to be done. Essays, video essays, podcasts, and art pieces, all of these were now available for students to showcase their knowledge thanks to the use of AI. This is one of the ways AI can be used by teachers to help their teaching and learning of students.
Another teacher who is excited to integrate AI into their classroom is a Science teacher and Senior class representative Sarah Steward. When asked “Do you believe that this new software is going to completely change school for the future?” She answered “School? No, the questions we ask, however, that is likely to change.” She followed up with “At the moment the technology has its limitations, so that means depending on what we’re asking students it can’t fully answer.” Mrs. Steward finds that AI is going to bring a lot more positive results compared to negative results. She is “Really excited about it” because “it helps students see what a good answer looks like.” She isn’t oblivious to the consequences of AI usage. She went on to say further into the interview that “It could have an effect on creativity. If the AI is designing your research questions, why bother?”
This might be the most concerning part about AI usage is the consequences of it becoming normal. If AI usage in students becomes normal, it could lead to students becoming amazing at getting mundane, practically mediocre jobs. After a conversation with Ken Hansberry, a current media studies teacher, he painted a picture of what the future could look like. Imagine a student who truly did only use ChatGPT through high school and college and ended up looking for a job. If I need to have 20 articles out in a day, no human man could do that. Only someone who knows how to work with AI could get that job done. Now this might seem like using AI will create jobs, but these jobs are only given to those who have no other qualifications. For example, if I was the CEO of this fictional company, I would never promote this employee. If all they know how to do is manipulate AI to give articles, I want to keep them there because they haven’t earned the other qualifications that other candidates have earned by doing the work themselves.