In recent years, the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has allowed it to integrate itself heavily within society. With the increased usage of AI, questions arise such as where the line lies between using it as a tool and being entirely reliant on it. This rings especially true in academia and whether a student is using it to generate an essay or a teacher using it to generate lesson plans, AI within only a few years since its popularization is cementing itself in higher education.
Alongside the rise of AI usage in higher education, there has also been an exponential increase of discussion around its role in important aspects of life, including job stability, artistry and education. People have taken on pro-AI and anti-AI positions in response and other stances falling somewhere along that spectrum. With how important education is to society, it is reasonable to have concerns, and ours is that AI is only helpful in isolated instances at best, and actively harmful to learning at worst.
My Opinion on AI as a Student and Artist
As a student at Parkland College, I have not found a good enough reason to use AI. One major part of two of my classes, Creative Writing and Composition II, is writing my own papers. If I were to use AI to write a creative writing story for me, I would not be turning in my own work, hindering my professor’s ability to grade my skill.
The use of AI also reduces credibility in an academic context. If I were to use AI in any of my assignments, it could ruin the credibility of any of my prior academic work. My career goals include becoming a librarian, a position that requires one to have a plethora of knowledge and be a reliable source. So, if I were to rely on AI for one of the main purposes of my job, I feel I would not be reliable enough for that job.
Here at Parkland, a significant number of students will go on to be future educators, nurses, technicians, and researchers. With them being in positions that require a lot of work and responsibility as they affect others’ lives, I am not okay with my potential doctors using or relying on AI for their education.
Similarly, as an artist, I have also not found AI to be a useful tool to me. Not because I think I am greatly skilled, but because I believe it takes away some of the most important parts of the creative process. In the very few times that I have used AI for image generation, it has not produced a result that I have found useful for the creative process. It is often derivative and not a good reference for what I want to create.
Perspectives on AI from Parkland College Faculty
Eric Sizemore, one of the librarians in the Learning Commons, specializes in helping students find the right books, research materials, and use the technology.
Sizemore, when asked about his use of AI, he stated that he uses AI as a way to keep up with it as it develops. Noting specific services like ResearchRabbit, a program used to find articles about a topic. He highlighted how AI can have great uses if used correctly.
Sizemore says:
I’m very worried that we will, you know take a long research article and summarize it and then read that summary and feel like that they have read the article, but they haven’t really understood it in depth and reverse as well if you are using articles and you are feeding into ai then spitting out an answer, you’re not writing that answer, so your brain has not gone through those steps.
Furthermore, he compared the use of your brain to the use of your muscles, stating that any muscle you do not use atrophies. In this case, the muscle can refer to our brain and specifically its ability to think critically. When using AI to write a summary of an article, a disconnect happens in which critical thinking skills are not being utilized. Reading a piece of writing in its authenticity is important to understand, comprehend and allow room for questioning of said material.
Another central concern of the use of AI is trusting it to be accurate. There are numerous occasions where AI has provided inaccurate information as it scrapes the internet for information to use. This includes images, text, and video. There is a lot of misinformation online, so it becomes difficult to verify the information that the AI is providing.
Thus, while AI can be a resourceful tool, it must be used carefully in the sense of not becoming overly reliant on it and that the information is being cross checked to prevent misinformation.
Nikki O’Brien is an instructor for First Year Experience 101 and is also an Inclusive Learning Coordinator. First Year Experience is a class that teaches new students about managing time, goal setting, educational and career planning. She has also helped in creating and directing a workshop on time management called Time Crunch Clinic.
When asking O’Brien about her experience with AI, she stated that she had not used it in her curriculum but that she has used it to assist in creating her time management workshop, Crunch Time Clinics. Specifically, she used AI image generation for the logo and title. When asked why she used it,
O’Brien responds:
I used it because I had decision overload in my mind, I was fatigued with making a lot of decisions and short on time. So I decided to let ChatGPT come up with something based on my description of what I needed, and I think it did a great job.
When asked if she has noticed AI usage having a negative effect on learning for students, she stated a similar concern as Sizemore; students relying on AI to do critical thinking for them.
O’Brien elaborates further, saying:,
I think it can yes, I also believe that it doesn’t necessarily have to, but as an instructor and someone who’s a part of generation X, my beliefs about learning in college are really grounded in the student’s ability to think critically for themselves and understand their values and explore and challenge their beliefs and if somebody is relying solely on AI to teach them or to generate responses to assignments, they’re missing out on that critical brain development and self-identification and participation in their own education.
Both Sizemore and O’Brien stressed that AI can be harmful to the student’s ability to learn as we should still be allowing ourselves the room for critical thinking. As students, we should weigh their opinions more heavily in the sense that we should not be complacent on how we learn and not be as reliant on AI. With such resourceful technology widely available so suddenly, we must be careful with how we use it.
However, Sizemore highlighted a few potentially helpful tools, one can wonder if they are missing out when they abstain from AI for schoolwork. To completely rule out the use of AI could potentially hinder our growth as students and individuals. What we can gather from the perspectives of a student, a librarian, and an instructor, is that developing your own skills is the goal, and that can be done without AI.
