It’s hard to forget just how immediate—and powerful—the rise of ChatGPT was.
Striking educational institutions across the nation and globe, its launch in November 2022 caused problems and elicited responses almost from the beginning. Teachers began reverting to paper assignments. Artificial intelligence-detecting technology, once unnecessary, combined with other innovative methods to thwart students’ attempts to cheat. Students were warned from even touching the generative language model.
While those actions may have been understandable in the moment, though, they are not acceptable now.
As students continue to explore the ever-evolving world of tools that AI has to offer, many schools are stubbornly stuck in a past that is growing farther and farther behind them. Ignoring the presence of AI is not just irrational; it is impossible.
Perhaps the most remarkable element of society is its ability to innovate and adapt to the circumstances around it. For centuries, humans have overcome the hurdles that have been thrown at them. Now, however, we face an issue of our own making, and as the role of AI in our society crystallizes, one thing has become clear—we cannot let its development outpace us.
While it is normally the dangers of AI that are discussed, particularly its prospect to degrade human imagination, its true potential lies in its ability to challenge students to a degree beyond current capabilities. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has acknowledged that AI “has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in education today,” including education inequality, while the World Economic Forum cites AI’s ability to “[present] an avenue through which students can improve digital literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity, preparing learners for future job demands.”
While some of the world’s most reputed international advocacy organizations may be on board with AI in educational institutions, schools themselves are different stories. Technology integration specialist Eric Curts, who has helped familiarize schools across the nation with AI usage, said that “schools are mostly in the early phases” of it, with much more emphasis on teacher use than student involvement. Many administrators and educators equate this hesitancy with the newness of AI and the lingering uncertainty of its potential for misuse.
While AI may seem like an earth-shattering phenomenon, though, it is merely the newest development in a string of technology that has fundamentally shaped the way that people think and operate. When the Internet was first introduced, it was dismissed as a passing phenomenon or regarded with skepticism. A century before that, reading too much was viewed as “leading people astray and ruining them for real life,” New York Times columnist Anna North writes.
These attitudes, targeting the very sources of information and entertainment that we now celebrate, reveal a fundamental characteristic of our society: a skepticism towards not just change but knowledge. Understandably, the unfamiliar makes us uncomfortable; however, that shouldn’t be a barrier for progress and innovation that will benefit society as a whole in the long run.
What many schools have failed to recognize is that change is inevitable; if they don’t choose to adapt, then they will eventually be forced to. Students, who have embraced AI from the beginning, are already a step ahead. Just a year after ChatGPT was released, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey indicating that one in five teenagers who had heard of ChatGPT had used it to assist with their schoolwork, with more recent reports indicating that that number has climbed to nearly 50 percent. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into the digital world that teens are familiar with, such as social media, it won’t be long before schools are left in the dust and unable to cope with their lack of AI literacy and knowledge. Resistance is a double-edged sword: it is only a viable tool for prevention for so long before it begins to spur the very movement it seeks to suppress.
Thus, if schools truly wish to provide students with a comprehensive and worthwhile education, they need to stop wielding this blade—rather, it’s time to start fighting fire with fire itself. If educational institutions take the time to educate staff members on the benefits of AI and provide opportunities for teachers to incorporate AI into their curriculum, steps that BHS is already beginning to introduce, they will be paving the way for a more intuitive and progress-oriented educational future. If students themselves are given the opportunity to learn about the ethical ways that AI complements assignments, perhaps they will be curbed from exercising AI in immoral ways.
With ChatGPT having already celebrated its second birthday and numerous other AI engines emerging in its wake, we are left with a choice: to allow our hesitancy to prevent us from exploring the depths of a promising new tool or to embrace the educational potential that AI has to offer.
