Artificial intelligence was never something I thought I would use when I was in high school or middle school. Frankly, I am not sure I even knew what AI was back then. However, now with chatbots like ChatGPT to write papers and image generators like Craiyon to produce pictures on the rise, there is validity in wondering how it can, has, and will continue to change the learning and educational landscape as we know it.
When I was still in high school, I would spend a lot of time researching and finding articles to support my claims and prove a point in essays. In order to find sources of value, I would use databases like Google Scholar or only look at sites with “.org” or “.edu” in their URL. Now that I am older and have a lot less time to work on each assignment, it would be a lie to say I haven’t thought about the ease of using AI chatbots for assistance. While I have seen videos on TikTok and other social media platforms advertising how easy to use and helpful they are, with the rise of AI assistance has come the rise of sites professors can use to examine our work. It can be argued that the sites professors use are not one hundred percent accurate, but the implementation alone is enough to dissuade many students, myself included, from using AI. Academic integrity is a very serious and important thing to uphold not only to me personally but to my university. Because of this, I have not and will never use AI to write an essay for me.
Despite my unwillingness to use chatbots to write for me, it can be a great tool for learning. I am a chemistry major, and sometimes it is hard for me to find resources to teach me a mechanism for a reaction or the history of the discovery of a compound. This is where AI search engines come in handy. I use Microsoft and their “AI-powered copilot,” Bing. Bing allows me to take the backseat in outsourcing for reputable research papers and lowers the amount of time I spend vetting them. I can allow the intelligence to do the work for me and simply click on the link(s) provided if it seems like the right fit for me and my goals. Also, since AI is constantly changing and adapting, I can give real-time feedback on the resources recommended to me, ensuring my next experience is better and incentivizing me to use it again.
Since my major does not involve a lot of writing, besides chatbots in Google and Microsoft’s search engines, there is not much else AI could do for me. Even though artificial intelligence does not hold a significant role in how I study and meet my learning goals, I can acknowledge it has made my life and many others’ lives easier and it is not going away anytime soon.