The Positives and Negatives of AI
Written by Zackary Brown ‘27
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently developed quickly, and with that, AI has been used by many students, teachers, and just normal people. Most people who use AI abuse it and use it for cheating. I think AI can be used to help and give ideas to its users, but people abusing its power have turned it into something that can kill creative minds and give bad habits.
I first wanted to interview my sister Brooke Brown, a senior at SJND to see how a student feels about AI. She talked about how she thinks AI can be dangerous when it comes to creative things like music and writing.
I agree with this because when a person uses AI it takes away the purpose and meaning behind what they are doing. For example, if someone were to make an essay using AI, it would ruin the project because you don’t learn anything and can ruin yourself by making you lazier and less creative.
When it comes to cheating using AI, she thinks that it is very bad for the person cheating with it. She says, “Using ChatGPT or AI to cheat, I think you are cheating yourself more than anyone else.” She thinks that people who use AI to cheat won’t get that far in life because of the corners they are cutting.
I would also have to agree with this. Using AI to cheat will only make you dumber; it might seem smart at the time, but the assignments you do now are meant to prepare you for the future, so using AI can make you less successful with school or things like jobs.
She thinks there are some positives to AI like how it helps teachers make assignments more challenging and make the students critically think on these assignments.
The final thing said by Brooke is that we should educate students about how AI should be used and how AI is not perfect and can make mistakes.
Next, I wanted to interview my dad to see what he thinks about AI as a parent.
His response was very similar to my sister’s with what he thinks about AI. He also thinks that AI is dangerous with how it can be used.
He also thinks that it can have some positive things to it also, like how it can help us find things humans can miss. This can be used in places like hospitals and schools to help out doctors and teachers.
A great thing my dad brought up is “The dangers of AI outweigh the benefits of it.” This is true; even with AI being used to help people, more people use it for bad things like cheating, and with AI developing at a rapid pace, we don’t know what it could be used for in ten years from now.
For his thoughts on kids using AI to cheat, he thinks that it’s dangerous for the kids. The point he makes is that it makes them not do the hard work resulting in them becoming dumber. He also brings up that kids who use AI won’t know what its like to create their own structure in an essay because AI will just make it for them. The last thing he said about this is that kids that use AI will ruin their own integrity to be honest making them untrustworthy.
For my last interview, I wanted to see a teacher’s point of view on AI, so I interviewed Mrs. Scott, a teacher at SJND.
Her thoughts on AI is that she thinks there are a lot of great things that can come out of AI. An example she brings up is adaptive learning. This would let kids work on their own level of work. Also, this can show teachers where the kid can be struggling in their work.
She thinks that kids who use AI for their papers will have flawed work because they can’t put evidence from the text into their paper because the AI doesn’t have access to the text. She says, “I think AI being used right now will be clunky.”
In conclusion, I think that AI should not be used by students, and students should realize that it is not perfect. AI could have positives but it is just too new. With AI growing rapidly, we need to understand it and use it for good. AI at this point is bound to be in our lives, and I think that it is on us to know when and how it should be used.
