Being a student while the popularity and usage of AI (artificial intelligence) is on the rise has been a really unique and interesting experience. While many people argue that AI is used by students to cheat, which is true and a big problem for academia, AI can be used in a responsible way that helps people be more efficient, whether it be in their jobs, schoolwork, or everyday tasks.
I believe that one of the major issues that we all have when talking about AI is acknowledging that it is a nuanced subject. AI tends to receive two very different descriptions/opinions: 1) AI is evil and it is going to take over the world and destroy humanity, or 2) AI is really good and will help humans advance in society. Before I continue with my essay, I want to make it clear that while I’m going to discuss positives of AI, that doesn’t mean that there are no negatives. And the positives can’t cancel out the negatives, and vice versa. I also believe that AI is a useful tool, but it can’t do everything for us.
First, I want to share my own experiences with using AI as a student. I am an English major, so a majority of my assignments are reading and writing based. I have used ChatGPT many times to summarize readings that I’m having a hard time understanding. I found this especially helpful last semester when I was taking medieval and renaissance literature and eighteenth-century literature. Before taking these classes, I had no experience reading anything from that time period and it took me a while to get comfortable reading that kind of writing. When I would read through something, I’d have ChatGPT give me a short summary, and then I’d read over it again. By going through this process, I felt so much more confident and comfortable in my understanding of what I was reading, as well as in my writing. It would help me in understanding the order of events in a story, and it would remind me if I had missed learning about a character or point out an allusion I didn’t pick up on. I like to use the analogy of ChatGPT being like guard-rails at a bowling alley; if you slip it’ll help you get back on track, but you also can’t rely on them to do all the work for you.
While it is true that many students use AI to cheat on assignments, papers, and tests, many students use AI as a tool that can help them complete assignments more efficiently and thoroughly. I gave a brief explanation of how I, as an English student, utilizes AI, but I wanted to represent how some of my peers use AI to assist them with schoolwork, so I wanted to discuss some of the responses from our class’s Padlet question: “How do you currently use AI?” A few of my classmates say they normally use ChatGPT to give them inspiration for essay topics. A lot of my classmates also mentioned using Grammarly, which automatically fixes grammar mistakes in their writing. These are pretty innocent uses of AI that don’t do all the work for you or don’t require zero brain power, and I feel like most students (maybe) teachers/professors would agree that using AI in those ways is not cheating.
One article that we read and discussed in class features anecdotes from people who have utilized AI to help them do their jobs more efficiently. This article is titled “Meet the ‘super users’ who tap AI to get ahead at work,” specifically, there is a primary focus on neurodivergent people and how they utilize AI in a way that is especially helpful to people with ADHD. One woman, Becca Chambers, a former chief communications officer, describes AI as a tool that “masks her neurodivergence”.
She has even made a BeccaGPT bot, which she trained with a year’s worth of her writing and podcasts to help brainstorm and edit content for social media using her voice. BeccaGPT inspired her to create bots for company executives so her team can ghostwrite for them.
Another “super-user” featured in this article named Lisa Ross, who also has ADHD, claims that using AI has “doubled their productivity for almost everything.” Specifically, in this article they describe that AI assists them to, “create content using specific frameworks, to prepare for tough conversations, to help with project and strategic planning, and to determine impact.” Ross has been able to utilize in ways for increasing their productivity at work, as well as assisting them through difficult life scenarios.
Despite my paper’s focus on the benefits of AI for students and learning, I want to also discuss the wide variety of fields that AI can be beneficial in. Another piece of writing we read and discussed in class highlighted a positive impact AI has made in the medical field. A company called VisualDx created a derm expert product with AI that has helped identify skin cancer and other skin diseases on individuals. Their website illustrates how their product allows you to take a picture of your skin with your phone and upload it to the DermExpert which analyzes the photo with AI image search first and then is verified and explained to you by an actual human dermatologist.
To conclude my essay, I wanted to return to the idea that any conversation we have about AI is going to be nuanced because it is a deeply complicated subject. So, no matter what kinds of consequences we reap from using AI, it has still proven to be a powerful and useful tool when it is in the right hands.