By Dragos Cojocariu
@redlineproject
Artificial Intelligence is quickly reshaping education in schools, with advanced tools and resources now being more accessible to both students and teachers.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022 and a wide range of other AIs that work specific tasks, modern culture popularized the use of Artificial Intelligence. This allowed AI to make its way into different fields, including education.
Students began using AI as a tool in their education since ChatGPT appeared. Taylor Burmeister, an English teacher at a District 218 High School, said he noticed students using AI in “the last two years” (since the Fall of 2022).
Many people assume that students only use AI to cheat. While cheating is a reality, it isn’t the only route students take; there are many other positive ways to integrate AI into a student’s education. Responsive (language-processing) AIs help students with their studying. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineerings (IEEE), AI act as colleagues to students, even at the most basic level: “the development and use of robots as teacher assistants and colleagues, cobots, which can be used to undertake basic and even advanced teaching tasks, such as teaching students to read and pronounce words.”
AI can also summarize a subject for the student in their studying, and it is more powerful in specific topics than others. Louis Lozneanu, a third-year undergraduate majoring in Applied Analytics with a minor in Artificial Intelligence at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said AI helped him by summarizing audio and making notes and flashcards. He also said, “It’s very… hard to develop AI for hard mathematics [like calculus] and economics,” but that AI is “good at… statistical analysis” and “really good at computer science.” AI is a great tool that allows students to comprehend lectures and readings; it is, however, better at statistics and coding than high-level math.
Augmented reality: Scan the QR code below to watch a sticky note AR graphic about AI
Unfortunately, students have abused AI, mainly through plagiarism in essays. Both Taylor and Louis mentioned their experiences with other students entirely relying on AI to write their essays.
Professors, including Taylor, use plagiarism and AI detectors to catch cheating students. Louis said AI can also “reference fake papers,” a big giveaway to a cheating student. The making up of fake papers is part of a bigger topic called AI hallucinations, which the International Machines Business Corporation (IBM) defines hallucinations as “a phenomenon wherein a large language model (LLM)—often a generative AI chatbot or computer vision tool—perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.”
While students have been integrating modern AI into their education since late 2022, teachers and curriculums are currently following suit. According to Forbes Advisor, “60% of educators use AI in their classrooms.” Burmeister said that at his school, “the English teachers… are test piloting a curriculum this semester that does have an AI grading tool for essays.” He even briefly mentioned that schools are updating their policy handbooks to integrate AI.
Teachers have many hopes and fears about the future of AI in their classrooms. According to Forbes Advisor, some hopes include seeing AI “used more widely, but not as a central component.” Some fears include those previously mentioned: “plagiarism in essays/work” and “reduced human interaction in learning.”
While teachers may have many worries and fears, and a lot is unknown about how AI will continue to evolve and adapt to education, schools should act in learning different AI’s and how they work. This way, they can include AI in their curriculums and as a tool for educators, but also monitor how students use AI. Schools can also give comprehensive education to their students on how to use AI ethically.
How We Did It
Reporters were asked to make storyboards to show how their augmented-reality projects would be built. Below is the storyboard for the AR project above.
