In recent years, artificial intelligence has seen a major surge across numerous fields, including education. As AI becomes more prominent in schools, it is important to understand AI’s evolution and the limits of its use.
In schools, two questions arise: are students using AI in a way that negatively affects their morals and learning, and are they using it to do their work for them? Mr. Brendan Flanagan, a teacher in the MBS English Department, stated that, “In some cases, students use generative AI improperly by asking it to do their work. For example, AI can be problematic when asking it to do research, because it can give false information or even fake websites. However, in other cases, AI can be useful for grammar checkers or to generate ideas. AI has also been useful for access to certain resources that were not previously available. AI can act as a tutor, allowing students to ask AI to explain things they may not understand, even at 11 p.m. when tutors are not available.”
AI faces controversy about its usage, and even though AI can be useful in these scenarios, Mr. Flanagan mentioned how “school is like the gym for your brain, and doing homework and creating your own ideas is like doing exercises in the gym. The exercises are what help you build, and without practicing and doing it on your own, the positive effects would never happen, similar to how asking Chat GPT to do work will most likely not help personal development.” Using AI to do school work is definitely not acceptable, and using it unethically in school can have major consequences.
Some classes at MBS actually focus on artificial intelligence, including the AT class on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the new elective being offered in the next school year, Man vs. Machines, which will dive deeper into how AI versus human interactions are portrayed in literature. Similarly, some projects that teachers have assigned have AI components, like asking generative AI to create images for a project.
However, in MBS classrooms, Mr. Flanagan mentions how “learning inside the classroom will be less affected than outside of the classroom due to AI. He said, “preserving human interaction and the environment of classrooms at MBS is extremely important, and, even though AI can definitely be useful, practicing doing your own work and creating your own thoughts will ultimately produce the most efficient and hard-working students in the future.”
