Our Relationship with AI
This past weekend I caught up with a great friend of mine and we got to talking about AI and the over-reliance and over-emphasis that people are placing on it. My friend told me that a colleague of hers said she did not need to learn how to use excel to do her job (she is an analyst), because she has ChatGPT. Both of us were baffled at this response and had a long pause and that begged the question for us: have younger generations in particular become too co-dependent on AI? A resounding yes is what I hear from most people. We hear this from high school students to educators to employers.
We had an essay contest this last spring and read entries from more than 600 students across the country. In reading the essays there was a predominant theme that most students were expressing. Students were overwhelmed by the usage of AI in the classroom setting. They reported that most of their peers are using AI for basic homework questions, to assist with writing term papers and more. Additionally, many students shared a frustration that the policies on AI usage are not consistent, ambiguous, and rarely enforced. Students shared that AI is replacing a lot of research, analysis, and learning.
With many students turning to AI and becoming reliant on it for much of their school work, what should students be doing and what should educators be doing? This bleeds from the students then into the younger generation of employees. If left to each person’s own ethical bounds this will take different forms of people rationalizing what is right and wrong and where education gets stifled by AI.
Some would say that the schools and education boards need to step in with AI policies to firm up when, how and why AI can be used. Others would say that it should be up to the teachers to determine the usage. Still others would say that students should determine what they think is appropriate.
The crux of this lies in determining the ethical bounds of what is right about the usage of AI. When is AI an aide in learning and when does it start to replace authentic and genuine ways of thinking and creativity? The answer to this can be a very personal answer as most people have some grey area on this. What we can do is start putting some ethical frameworks in place to give suggested ways of standardizing and establishing boundaries.
Frameworks can help educators know that AI can be used as a starting point or ending point. When we think about technology and how it has helped and progressed us forward we need to think about what is important to learn and where technology can fill the gaps. I point back to the example of the person who wanted to use ChatGPT in place of learning excel and essential skills of her job. Without having to learn how and why things are done and why you use a specific formula for math or how to spell a specific word we lose the ability to have the foundational knowledge needed to be able to think bigger and broader. We need to have healthy boundaries with AI and examine our relationship with AI.
