The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has skyrocketed in the past year, it is consistently used as a study tool as well as a method for writing essays and image creation.
Maybe this entire article was written by AI—with a prompt of, “Write me an article about AI”.
It isn’t. But I won’t lie and say the title wasn’t either, because it was. Maybe you noticed how generic the title really is or maybe it sounded a bit clunky to you. And that’s what AI does, it takes pre-existing formulas to create slightly different results that toe the line between plagiarism and originality.
But besides the title, you would have no way of knowing unless you ran this entire thing through turnitin.com. But doing that seems like a lot of work, so why would you?
How Exactly Does AI Work?
AI—where it is now—cannot work without the help of human intelligence. It piggy-backs off of initial writing, art, and photography, all of which were, of course, done by people. It’s constantly learning and taking in, and being fed by computer developers, new information to use. However, because of its uses in writing, it can lead to copying pre-existing work without credit or even a mention of the original writer. When dealing with filters that make art out of images, it will even take art into its database without the original artist’s permission or even knowledge. If you’ve ever seen random squiggles in AI art that looked out of place it most likely is an amalgamation of artist signatures that the AI didn’t know what to do with.
AI isn’t leaving anytime soon—if ever—and plagiarism and academic dishonesty aren’t something that may be on the minds of AI programmers.
ChatGPT is one of the most well-known AI programs out there. One of the main problems with asking ChatGPT to write you an essay is that it could give you excerpts from articles, books or websites that you have no right to use.
Someone could get around this by simply rewriting the entire thing in their own words. But those who use AI to do their school assignments often wouldn’t take the extra time to fix it. It would just be more work for an assignment they already weren’t going to do.
AI can be used effectively as a tool. Something many may not immediately register as AI is Grammarly. While it didn’t get to be as widespread until around 2016, Grammarly has been around since 2009. Similarly, Quizlet recently released an AI chat, Q-Chat, which is described as an AI Tutor for school and work.
I’ve been using Q-chat a bit recently and one thing it is good at is staying on topic.
So Is Using AI Cheating?
Simply put—yes it is, and if you think it’s not, then you need an AI to refresh your critical thinking skills. However, depending on how you go about using AI determines if it’s considered cheating. Even more, it may depend on who is grading or looking over your papers. Many teachers can even tell by looking at just the first few sentences. Something AI isn’t great at is replicating the tone someone might use for certain assignments. It can’t make a personal essay personal because it doesn’t have personal experience. Or, if you are writing an informative essay and all your information is incorrect or unrelated, a teacher will easily be able to pick it out as not being your own work. If you submit an essay about marine engineering for a psychology assignment the teacher will definitely know something is up.
Staff here at North enforce a zero-tolerance policy for using AI to complete your work for you. If you are caught using AI in your work, you will get a 0% and have to redo it in front of a teacher without access to technology. So with all these roadblocks, it’s more effort than it is worth to completely use AI in your schoolwork. For more information on how AI is being used in classrooms across the United States go to the Office of Educational Technology.
However, something AI can be useful for is generating ideas. I talked to Jordan Hopper, one of the Edmond North English teachers, and she was in support of using AI when it comes to formulating ideas, especially if coming up with creative ideas doesn’t come easily to a student. She even told me that the English department used AI to create “literary-themed or classical literature-themed puns” for breakfast items. It helped them come up with names such as “Scone with the Wind” and “To Kill a Clementine” for titles of breakfast items. The basic idea was created by the department, but the specific puns had a little help from AI.
Hopper does have a concern about what AI takes away from writing, which is the human aspect of it. She told me, “Maybe it [AI] can get you started, but it might not necessarily be your ending place. Because you always want to make your writing your own because it’s your voice that matters.”
With the constant growth and expansion of AI comes the possibility of dependence upon the technology; however, students should be prepared to grow with it and learn to harness its usefulness.
