Hey Siri… call mom.
Hey Siri… take me to the closest Starbucks.
Hey Siri… are you AI?
Without realizing it, almost everyone uses AI on a daily basis. Whether it’s asking Siri a question, listening to a customized Spotify playlist, using Amazon’s recommendations, or going to the top result for a search engine, AI is unavoidable.
According to an article by the National University, 77 percent of tech devices contain some form of AI. One AI in particular, ChatGPT, a generative AI developed by OpenAI, is available to students on their school-issued Chromebooks and has had a heavy impact on the PHS student body.
“I think a lot of people use ChatGPT, and I think it’s more normalized now than it was a couple of years ago,” junior Meher Bachher said. “In the past, I think it was a bigger deal if you were like, ‘I use ChatGPT for this assignment,’ but now I think it’s more normalized because more people use it.”
At PHS, AI usage isn’t simply all in or all out; there’s a broad spectrum of ways in which different students interact with it. On one end of this spectrum is Bachher.
Bachher said she rarely uses ChatGPT for her schoolwork.
“[I have never really felt inclined to use AI] because I have most of the resources that I need, and I normally just use Google,” Bachher said. “I don’t really think that I need another search engine.”
Science teacher Duncan Kight said that he believes AI can be particularly useful when studying for tests as it can offer a more personalized study plan for a student.
“What I really like seeing students using AI programs for is practice questions before a test or helping them create a study guide,” Kight said. “I’ve seen a lot of students take entire sections of text and say, ‘Can you summarize this down into a one-page study guide?’ and I think those are creative ways of engaging with the tool in a way that’s really going to benefit them.”
AI can also be helpful in the sense that it can spark fresh ideas for students.
“I use AI to help me if I’m lacking ideas or if I need something to inspire me creatively,” sophomore Colin Amen said.
For many students, ChatGPT is not only a reliable source of information but also a way to improve the efficiency of their study time.
“It just saves me a lot of time,” Knight said. “I don’t know if my grades have necessarily gone up, but it’s definitely a lot easier to study.”
While it’s not uncommon for students to use ChatGPT to study for assessments or to help them solve their homework problems, many draw the line at cheating with AI-generated answers.
“I’ve never cheated using AI. I feel like once you get into plagiarism and copy and pasting answers, it crosses the line,” Amen said.
However, some students have crossed this line, using AI to cheat on assignments and assessments.
“I mainly use AI to write things for English, usually smaller assignments,” a PHS sophomore said.
The student said that AI has had an overall more positive impact on their life.
“It’s just removed a lot of stress, which has made my time in school more enjoyable,” they said.
Though the line between using AI as a tool compared to as a cheating method is very clear, determining when it begins to serve as a more positive or negative factor in a student’s academic life is much more ambiguous.
Bachher said she feels like there’s a certain point at which AI usage becomes harmful to a student.
“I think AI use can be super helpful when it’s used in regulated amounts,” Bachher said. “I think that when you get to the point where you use it to generate ideas rather than using it as a tool, it can be harmful because it discourages students from coming up with their own ideas and being unique in their own ways.”
Another concern about using ChatGPT for academic support is its reliability.
“I wish that students would be more discerning with the responses that they get from ChatGPT,” Kight said. “I find that something like one in every ten questions that are asked, they get a completely wrong answer [from the AI].”
Kight said he believes it’s important for students to recognize that, like all other search engines, ChatGPT isn’t 100 percent accurate.
“I worry that with lack of time and critical thinking skills, students are getting incorrect answers and accepting them as truth. I don’t discourage using AI, I discourage using AI without a critical eye,” Kight said.
Though AI is a relatively new technological advancement whose future holds uncertainty, students expressed their belief in the importance of educating our generation about it.
“Everyone says AI is the future, and we need to have the tools in order to be able to use it properly,” Bachher said.
