AI could impair student education

By Erick Johnson

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic of conversation recently, especially in education. It is starting to raise questions about what the future of education may look like. A growing concern across the nation is that with these tools, students cheat by relegating their work to the AI, who can write a long, detailed assignment in a matter of seconds, bypassing the learning process that is usually required to complete the work.

For example, ChatGPT, a software developed by OpenAI, is capable of writing complex essays, poems, stories, and more at a user’s request. OpenAI is a company dedicated to ensuring that artificial general intelligence becomes beneficial for humanity. However, the software has become controversial since it has been considered to have a negative impact on the classroom.

“ChatGPT risks damaging students’ writing ability, as well as their general work ethic,” English teacher Mx Barr said. “Even if they block the website on school servers, students have personal devices they can use. There’s a limit to what a school district can do to restrict that activity.”

ChatGPT can produce a basic summary, but it can’t reproduce human originality, Barr said. A machine can produce randomness, but that’s not the same thing as the originality or creativity that a person could write, xe said. Technology is getting to the point where AI can edit more effectively than a lot of the things we’ve seen so far, Barr added.

“I’m sending kids out to the world, hopefully knowing how to communicate and document their ideas,” Barr said. “ And if they’ve cheated their way through that using AI, there are going to be other barriers that come into their way even if I’ve failed to catch it.”

However, there are a few ways teachers can recognize the work of an AI, such as pinpointing a student’s vocabulary. For example, teachers are able to learn a student’s vocabulary, writing styles, and other patterns, and then, when an assignment does not match, it is an indicator the work was written by AI, English teacher David Soltero said.

“As teachers, we know our students, and we know, based off how much time we spent with them, their own capabilities, their own writing style, their own comprehension,” Soltero explained.

“And so if it’s like something out of the ordinary, right, then it’s kind of an indicator that it might not be their work.

Around the country, ChatGPT and other similar software is being blocked at schools, according to Business Insider. At the same time, new software is being developed to detect computer-written text, including an update to Turnitin.com that would successfully detect ChatGPT written text, according to Business Insider.

“At the moment, I think it’s on the fence because it’s new, and we don’t know a whole lot about it and how to actually incorporate it into the classrooms and the limitations to it and also identifying if a student’s response is AI-generated,” Soltero said. “I think right now, the limitation is okay, having (ChatGPT) blocked in school computers, but I think once we start to know more about it, and how it can be a tool in the classroom, then we start to refocus and reevaluate the limits that we place on it,” he added.

There’s not much that teachers can do except stay vigilant and catch as many students as they can when they do cheat and educate them about why that is wrong, english teacher Ana Hahs said. She has caught approximately 50% of her students cheating using ChatGPT to turn in their assignments, whether the assignments were “big or small”, she said. There is a growing need for teachers to assign handwritten work in their classes in order to limit the amount of cheating taking place in all assignments.

“In order for it to be positive, it has to be students still creating their own original responses, but also a responsibility on the students to recognize that it’s a tool that’s supplemental,” Soltero said. “I do think that maybe in the future, it could be something that we use similar to how we use other resources online that help us with our understanding or comprehension of texts or even learning more about how to grow as a writer.”

Sketchy or priceless? Artists reflect on implications, impacts of AI-generated art

By Savan Bollu

While an artist uses a lifetime of experience and carefully honed technical skill to create their art, Artificial Intelligence (AI) art programs like DALL·E 2 and Dream can generate artwork in mere seconds based on short text prompts from users. In response, artists have expressed both excitement and concern.

Junior Agna Soneji, an AP Art and Design student, carefully crafts the composition and color in her art to convey emotion, she said. AI doesn’t put the same emotion and background in its art, she said.

“I don’t think it has the authenticity of art,” Soneji said. “It doesn’t have the meaningfulness we find in art.”

Artists and hand-made artwork may become undervalued because people can now generate art using the internet, Soneji said. Copyright issues are another concern because AI art is generated from existing human artwork that may have been used without artists’ permission, she said.

“I think they’ve ripped off artists and have just cut-and-pasted pieces, and that should (violate) copyright because you’re using other people’s art to make something out of a computer,” Soneji said. “Just like you can’t use ChatGPT for an essay, that’s what you’re doing for art. It’s ripping it off and saying it’s your own.”

Ceramics teacher Jeff Albrecht has spent the last decade selling artwork in galleries in Hawaii and around the world, he said. People buy his art because of the emotions he instills in it based on his experiences and the subsequent connection that people make with it, he said.

“If I go into my studio and it takes me two nights to work on a piece, it’s really a culmination of all those years and all those projects that I’ve played around (with) and explored,” Albrecht said.

“Really, paintings take me 50 years. The next year, they’ll take me 51 years. It’s a process, and it’s a journey.”

Just like some of Albrecht’s clients prefer purchasing his original paintings instead of a print, there will always be people in the world who value a oneof-a-kind artwork touched by a human, Albrecht said. As a result, he is not con cerned about AI replacing artists, he said.

“There are billions of people on the planet,” Albrecht said. “I know that no matter what happens with AI, I’m nev er going to have one of my paintings in everyone’s house. … Since that market is never going to be oversaturated with my artwork, why am I concerned about

AI, which is a totally different vertical in the art world?”

AI is a powerful tool that is already integrated into platforms like Photoshop, and Albrecht may even consider using it to make art in the future, he said. In a changing art world, Albrecht recommend that artists try different types of art instead of specializing in a single area that AI could easily take over, and to be cautious when posting pictures of artwork online to avoid unwanted additions to AI databases, he added.

“Those are some of the challenges you’ve got to be aware of, and you can’t let them stop you (from making or selling art),” Albrecht said. “You adjust and you adapt.”

Alternatively, AI can make art more accessible by encouraging people who aren’t as technically skilled to make art, drawing teacher Hyemin Jo said.

“There are always going to be people who appreciate traditional art, so I don’t think it’s going to take away their (artists’) jobs,” Jo said. “But by making art a lot more approachable to a larger population, it actually opens the door for more people instead of closing (them).”

Jo compared users who generate AI art to Marcel Duchamp, an artist who found a urinal and signed it with a made-up signature, creating a controversial yet revolutionary piece of art that museums still showcase today, she said. People debate whether his work was art because he did not make the urinal from scratch, Jo said. However, she views his work as art, she said.

“I think just coming up with a creative idea and showing it visually itself is already an art,” Jo said.