In recent years many schools have faced a large threat to student learning and growth: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Bothell High School (BHS) is no exception. AI has created an environment where those who use it are seeing declines in writing ability and those who don’t use it are under suspicion.
I interviewed multiple students here at BHS with broad takes on the matter. Beginning with BHS student Rajeev, who said, “I don’t think it affects us, it can benefit us if you use it responsibly & ethically”. This is a shared sentiment by many students, but the issue is that most students do not care to learn about responsible AI use. Ethical AI use is defined as maintaining integrity, protecting your data privacy, and critically evaluating AI outputs. This definition was collected by compiling many universities policies on AI use or from articles discussing how to start adding policies onto AI. But from a contradicting opinion on AI from Eybol, “AI has a negative impact on us. Three of my friends were good writers, and then over the summer they’ve lost the ability to think creatively.” This is actually a factual argument, as it has been observed in studies that the use of AI causes less brain activity in those using ChatGPT to write. In an article published on Education Week by Sarah Schwartz “When students rely on ChatGPT to write their essays, they aren’t engaging their brains as deeply about the topic as they would if they did all the writing themselves.” This goes to show that proper learning comes from engaging your mind, not using shortcuts.
A very interesting second take from a student named Serena here at BHS describes the use of AI with teachers. Serena said, “Some teachers have used it to give feedback, which makes me feel less confident in the feedback given,” this being something that has recently become a hot debate amongst teachers. Applications such as TurnItIn use AI to detect, well, AI. This was discussed in my English 101 class with Professor Dr. Angela Cox. So what exactly are the dangers of using AI to grade papers? Well there are definitely large issues at hand, in another article published on Education Week and yet again by Sarah Schwartz, “But researchers have found that AI can be biased against certain racial and ethnic groups when evaluating writing.” This creates a gap in its ability to grade fairly and justly. A quote from an article published on the UN’s official website quoted from Ashwini K.P., a human rights specialist summarizes, “bias from the past leads to bias in the future.”
While we can not give a defined verdict to AI while researchers currently investigate it further, we should be cautious around the use of AI in academics. Recording true human thought and shaping young minds in an organic way is crucial to the future generations of aspiring writers, artists, doctors, teachers and everyone in between at Bothell High School.
