AI On the Rise

by Hudson Marmon editor-in-chief

Since its debut late in the first semester, Chat GPT -- an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot -- has been gaining popularity among students as a quick and easy way to complete written assignments. But with its exponential rise in popularity, teachers are met with another problem to face in the classroom. Senior English teacher Gary Glenn hasn’t come in contact with any AI generated work, but he is already planning on how he will handle the topic next year.

“Currently, I haven’t had any experience with it other than just being aware of what it is and knowing that students know what it is,” Glenn said. “I think next year, it may change the way I introduce academic honesty -- I might include that in my syllabus. I will plan to do more in-class essays versus out of class.” tion software to combat the use of AI in written assignments.

“I do use turnitin.com, and there is a Chat GPT searcher in there now,” Glenn said. “I have used turnitin.com prior to this, so that’s nothing new; [students] always submit their papers to turnitin. com.”

Despite the development of AI detection software, sophomore English teacher Marc Gibbens believes the use of AI in general is a greater issue.

“There’s a series of underlying assumptions when a student goes to use software like that I’m not even sure students are aware of but that the implications of which are extremely negative for a school environment,” Gibbens said. “Namely, it implies that

While AI technology is evolving at a rapid pace, trusted assignment submission websites such as turnitin.com have premiered AI detec- the purpose of school is to earn as high a score as possible while doing as little actual work as possible.”

While many students justify the use of AI by saying the assignments they are given are busy work, Gibbens chal- changed the definition of busy work itself.

“Oftentimes, students and teachers don’t have the same understanding of what busy work is,” Gibbens said. “Students think busy work is work that takes time, which is not busy work. There’s a lot of good work that takes a lot of time to complete. My understanding of what busy work is, is that it is an assignment whose sole function is to take time.” bens explained one of his biggest frustrations with the development and use of AI technology.

"...It implies that the purpose of school is to earn as high a score as possible while doing as little actual work as possible.”

Marc Gibbens

Additionally, he gave an example of what, in his eyes, buy work would be.

“So when I

“I don’t, as a teacher, want to have to be suspicious all of the time of all of my students,” he said. “The goal is always to build an environment that’s conducive to deepening the study of English and reading and writing and thinking. And so, all of the structures in my room are designed to promote that, they’re not designed to catch students in the act of academic dishonesty.” experience with having to verify his work was original.

“[My teacher] put it into an AI checker, and it came back as positive.” Burda said. “Then I submitted some original work and it also came back as positive. So I showed them, made the argument, and they said the writing style was similar enough.”

Despite this incident, Burda is still a proponent for the use of AI, and explained some of the ways he has used AI outside of school.

“I used it to help generate think, ‘what is an assignment that I could give students that would meet that criteria?’ I think of a word search,” Gibbens said. “That would keep them busy, but literally would teach them nothing. Like, that’s a waste of time. I think students tend to make the category of busy work much broader than what it actually is.”

From a teacher’s perspective, Gib-

To deepen this frustration, confronting students whose writing is flagged for being AI generated isn’t at all simple. Turnitin.com has reported a 1% false detection rate in their AI detection software, so the possibility of a false accusation can be frightening for many teachers.

Junior David Burda explained his some thank you letters after I had interviews for internships, [and] I used it to help me with some ideas for some specific [projects],” Burda said. Similarly, junior Brody Salmonson has used AI to assist him in various classes.

“Certain things like writing, sometimes I’m not very creative. I can use it to help brainstorm. I mean, I know I can use it to make a whole paper if I need to, but pretty much I just use it if I need ideas and things like that.” Salmonson said. e