Negative Impacts of AI Use in Education

By: Jupiter Sousa
Sprayberry High School
Marietta,GA

AI has been increasingly dominating society as early as 1956 according to Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.

AI has been proven to be a good tool to assist others in many aspects however, some abuse this technology by replacing creative writing with AI to cheat. NerdyNav confirms that 43% of college students use ChatGPT and/or other AI sources and 89% of those students use AI for homework assignments.

This reliance on AI to complete educational tasks has decreased critical thinking, IQ for youths and shortened attention spans. As this will not only affect this generation negatively, but future generations as well. Heavily relying on ChatGPT or AI overview can cause: under developed minds, conflict in problem solving, and lack of knowledge, which decreases a teacher’s ability to teach and students’ ability to learn essential information from textbooks, lectures or socialization that can expand their views.

“Writing is essentially thinking- if you’re not putting in thought, you’re not really learning,” said Braine Ash, a teacher at Clarke Central High School in Athens, Georgia. ” You are not building that skill when you make a computer write it for you.”

This dependence on AI won’t help you obtain the knowledge, which dramatically affects the education for youth in all aspects of learning: “A lot of these kids in math, they’ll take virtual school and will get these classes done in days, it’s not just English.” Mr. Ash says.

This not only impacts students, but also teachers and future generations as they’ll continue to depend on AI to get their high school or college degree, lowering the IQ average for future kids and academic expectations. Ash said teachers need to adjust their teaching styles to consider AI..

“Is it the end of civilization? I don’t think so, however English teachers are going to have to continue to think about how we teach with AI now.”

This is why many teachers are now prone to assign in class essays, so you cannot take it home.

Many debate on the topic of AI and its qualifications for “cheating.” For example, some teachers allow students to use AI to correct or help essay writings to perfect it in order to turn in. But Ash isn’t one of those teachers. “It’s a blurry line there, some teachers don’t have problems with a student doing that- I would not [agree with that] .”

Despite Ash agreeing on net positives of AI being able to assist people who struggle with certain subjects getting automatic feedback on how to correct their mistakes, he believes the negatives overpower the positives in AI. “There’s no denying that at this point, their growth during these years will dictate what kind of writers and readers they will become.”

Ash said that AI usage differs in adults to youth, as adults already have the knowledge to write and read while youth haven’t fully developed yet. Instead of learning that skill they rely on AI to do it for them, never growing or challenging themselves.

The rise of AI may come at the expense of a massive decline in future generations’ IQ. According to ie University, “As reliance on AI grows, experts warn that it could diminish critical-thinking skills and alter fundamental cognitive processes.”

This directs that society should work alongside AI, rather than use it as a replacement for human work. AI will continue to develop and grow within society and there’s no stopping it, but incorporating it in appropriate ways in everyday life will ensure AI has minimal impact on development.

“If you never go through something hard, you won’t grow,” Ash said, adding that if you challenge yourself, you build experience and life lessons that will help you evolve. “It’s not going away, we are going to have to teach our kids appropriate ways to do it, and hope they will.”