Artificial intelligence programs are harmful for the educational growth of future generations. We are starting to see the effects of AI as it grows in popularity and threatens to harm the current education system through cognitive and academic dependency, reducing critical thinking skills.
AI has been linked with reduction in higher order thinking tasks as it is used to save time by skipping these things. According to an article in the National Library of Medicine,“new neurons are kept alive by effortful learning.”
When people avoid harder thinking tasks, they harm the growth of connections between neurons in their brain.
Students are outsourcing their cognitive processes through AI. By doing this, they are not letting their brains grow or learn. With AI usage growing among the younger generation, it can be detrimental to their overall health, because their brains are growing during this time. It can be inferred that the presence of AI is actively harming the growth of teenage brains. Despite this harm, AI is being used at an unprecedented rate by students at all levels of education, especially teenagers.
Students that report using AI in school feel like they cannot be caught and are using it for every aspect of their education. Students who use AI have also said that they feel less secure with the content in the class and learn better when they don’t use AI.
When asked why students use AI to cheat, Emma Catherine Perry, the director of the writing center, explained that students typically plagiarize when they are stressed out and feel like the assignment that they are supposed to do doesn’t matter. She further expanded by talking about how some students use AI to reach word counts that they see as arbitrary. She believed that because people have shorter attention spans, they tend to use AI to get through something rather than spend a few minutes thinking about the topic at hand.
She explained, “Someone today was mentioning that they feel a sense of futility when they’re writing something that they don’t think people are going to read and that they don’t think matters.”
With all this said, how can students manage without AI in a classroom where it feels like the only choice?
During an Alternatives to AI workshop held by the University of Idaho Writing Center, the staff suggested that students should try to create groups where they hold each other accountable and ensure that AI isn’t being used. Another suggestion for dealing with or curbing the use of AI is to work in public spaces. People generally don’t want to be seen doing things they perceive as bad, such as using AI, and therefore will be less tempted to use it.
AI is hurting our education system and will have a lasting impact on the people who use it. Students must fight back and avoid AI before things worsen.
Dominic Dorigo can be reached at [email protected].