Con: AI advancements will ruin educational standards

Story Jayden Tran Illustration Ellie Nakamura

The beliefs behind modernization and futurist ideology have long driven the world to consider developing and integrating technology into undiscovered fields. The Bureau of Labor anticipates that the computer science industry will grow 15 percent in the next 20 years, an extremely high growth rate attributed to the growing reliance on technology. With more dependency on automation, the interest in compsci emerging as an undergraduate major further adds to the workforce of the computer science world.

Questions regarding artificial intelligence and the many ways that AI can shape societies and job fields have developed with a growing passion for computer science. From questions on independence and whether we will turn into the humans from Wall-E to the impacts on the economy, the controversies over AI have long condemned the world of education. Despite these questions, it is imperative that modernization chooses to separate AI from the educational world; students should strive to learn without being stunted by advancements that promote an “easy way out” of learning to articulate thoughts and comprehend the world around us that is presented by basic humanities curriculum.

ChatGPT, a natural language AI focused on answering prompts with a natural computer-generated response, is free to use and has been uploaded to the internet since November. The sudden release of the AI less than two months ago shocked the educational world in ways that society could not have predicted.

OpenAI, the developing company of ChatGPT, claims in their mission statement that they seek to “ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.” The development of their AI contradicts their vows.

ChatGPT has been an immense victory for the world of STEM. For scientists, the evolution of this AI marks progress in the growth of technology. For students interested in computer science, the realistic responses behind text-based prompts quickly manifest what hours of research online could attain.

“I was working on a coding project responding to a prompt and got stuck,” an anonymous senior said. “Eventually, I turned to using ChatGPT and I was able to overcome the challenges I was facing.”

However, AI like ChatGPT ultimately tramples on a majority of the humanities and social industries. For teachers, specifically those in courses that require essays, the release of this AI has been detrimental to the lessons they curate.

“This is disruptive in terms of how we are supposed to judge authenticity. It’s going to be tricky trying to navigate this new development,” SPHS English teacher Katherine Jaroch said.

“I sent the department an email with both perspectives of this debate and we discussed the possibility of going back to pen and paper or tools for surveillance in terms of writing.”

Living in a country driven by markets and economy, the shift to STEM and AI from humanities is representative of our public values. The growth of AI into education will teach children how things work; students will never learn why things work without humanities and the values of the liberal arts. ChatGPT oversteps the boundaries of STEM’s involvement in humanities curriculum. By furthering the development of this AI technology into the educational world, humanities will not be able to teach children the nuances surrounding the world we live in.

Society and computer scientists should not continue to further artificial intelligence that can be exploited in the educational world; ChatGPT is an example of how the progression of AI has impacted the lives of students. The growth and development of students may be stunted in order for them to get an easier A in a course as they utilize the AI to write their assignments. ChatGPT allows students to ignore the lessons of comprehension and understanding that guide English-focused curriculum.

The AI from Turnitin.com, focused on checking for plagiarism in educational writing, was already a pain for teachers and students alike. By using ChatGPT and developing more AI to either act like or counter it, the lives of both parties will just become a more convoluted system of checks and balances to see if someone’s work is plagiarized. Submitting to multiple websites is an aggravating process, and ChatGPT complicates it further.