A Tool, A Crutch, Or a Hinderance: How Should Generative AI be Used in the Classroom?

Generative AI has become one of, if not the fastest growing technical industry on the world. This immense growth in the last number of years has made it a very pressing concern for many educators as it has had a profound impact on how students work through and complete assignments. It seems as though students, educators, and the world in general have become extremely divided on AI and in which contexts it should be used, if at all.

The more integrated our society becomes with artificial intelligence, the more I have seen educators discussing how they use it in their classrooms. These applications in schools by teachers range from using AI to summarize their lesson notes to creating full unit plans using AI and even marking students’ assignments with it. I personally believe there is a line that can be crossed where AI use by educators becomes harmful which is why I do not personally endorse the major use of generative AI in the classroom. I think it can be a very useful tool for quickly summarizing lessons. An educator I have spoken to told me he will record a quick audio clip of how each class went and put it into an AI software in order to receive a class summary. I believe this is an effective and minimally intrusive way of using AI as it is both personal and requires minimal prompts to create a final product. My issues with AI lie with educators use it in ways that affect students through assignment creation, unit plans, and marking assignments. In my opinion this both reduces the creativity and abilities of educators relative to critical skills which are foundational to being a teacher and also breach consent with students as a non-negligible portion of students may not be comfortable with the use of AI in the classroom. As much as many students have begun using AI in school, there are likely just as many students who do not and do not support it, therefore I believe it is just to limit our AI use as an educator to personal creations as opposed to one’s that impact our classes.

I also believe it is difficult to use AI effectively to either lesson plan or mark assignments as many models learn from their users and what they like or do not like, therefore its products will often be skewed towards the user’s views. Additionally it is difficult to ensure the validity of the responses to prompts given by AI as the information can be pulled from a vast number of sources from across the internet. This open’s the door for both significant plagiarism using AI as well as a reduction of authenticity and original material. I believe as an educator this can be irresponsible without through investigation of the results AI give as the information we convey to students should be grounded in actuality, originality, and authenticity. When AI responses require such significant revision, until the technology advances to a point where this is not required, it can essentially be just as time consuming to create an original unit plan, assignment, or mark students’ assignments oneself as it is to use AI.

I would not call myself completely anti-AI but I would say I will remain cautious until there is both a greater understanding of it and ways to further ensure the information we receive from it is less biased and from reputable sources.

Film for Thought: One of the most influential films relating to AI in my opinion is Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). Despite being release in 2013, this film is one I find to be incredibly authentic and examines AI integration into everyday life in a way that few other films ever have.

The progression of AI integration into the facets of everyday life including our interpersonal and even romantic relationships as well as the dependance we see characters develop on AI throughout the film parallel the current state of the world in a profound way. This will be interesting film to continue evaluating relative to the real world progress of the human relationship with AI as it continues to develop.