Generative AI has become a regular topic of conversation, whether positive or negative. As AI advances and grows more powerful, its reach significantly expands. Around the world, AI is increasingly infiltrating educational institutions, particularly high schools offering educators new tools for assessments and assisting students. However, like other assistive tools, AI has its downsides, gradually emerging in classrooms. As a relatively new technology, its long-term effects are unknown, and many education systems lack proper policies to combat unethical use. AI is a powerful tool but requires proper knowledge to understand when it’s ethical to use and when it’s not. Addressing its ethical use also involves recognizing its benefits and downsides. Educators, policymakers, and students must work together to establish clear guidelines and foster ethical uses of AI that enhance learning. The challenge lies in balancing innovative tools with a student’s abilities.
AI is a very broad terminology for any computer program that is capable of independent thought. The term is broad as there is no singular AI, but a multitude of different AI models, each with their abilities. For the point of this essay, we will focus on the most prominent AI, ChatGPT by OpenAI, while ignoring other models like Perplexity and Grok. ChatGPT is capable of creating new ideas, writing full essays, and generating images. AI allows educators to create more engaging and creative assignments, benefiting students’ education (Fullestop, 2024) and acting as an assistant for educators, allowing them to focus on individual students. AI allows users to quickly create new content, answer questions, and provide support. Within a classroom, AI can be used as a translator, text differentiation generator, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text application. Each use case can benefit students, allowing them to reach high potential. At the same time, it can assist teachers, reducing their work and allowing them to focus on individual providing one-on-one learning.
AI’s negatives largely stem from its positives, fast responses, endless creativity, and the ability to analyze documents effortlessly. It may seem perfectly square on the surface, but in the classrooms, especially in high school, it becomes a negative. Ultimately in any educational environment, students want to pass. Tied with the common phrase of “work smarter, not harder” AI can be largely abused by students as a replacement for their work. AI envokes the ability for students to cheat, resulting in dishonest submitted work (Clugston, 2024). Furthermore AI-generated content has the tendency to produce false or misleading information that can harm students’ overall knowledge of a topic if they choose to use AI-generated content as a source of information (Glorioso, 2023). Often these are called “delusions” where the AI program believes the information it is providing is factual. In reality, it may not be.
Let’s take a step back and examine the positives and negatives provided. In one corner we have a useful tool that can bridge the divide of academic abilities between students. Students who may be hard of hearing can use AI for a speech-to-text function. Teachers can use AI programs to produce new, creative, assessments and generate new ideas to help student achievement. In the opposite corner, we open the floodgates for academic dishonesty with students submitting work, claimed as their own, generated by AI. AI detection tools at this time still routinely provide false positives. While students may submit AI work, we have AI delusions. Resulting in misleading or outright false information that can negatively effect students in the long term.
This brings us back to the question, of how can we ethically incorporate AI within the classrooms. It’s about consistency and traditional education. Firstly educators, along with administration and school boards, need to create policies to spell how exactly what is allowed and what is deemed inappropriate. Using AI as a tool to assist in learning is the goal. We want students to use it as a thesaurus and as an advanced brainstorming tool. But we need to draw a line that ensures students do not copy and paste an entire prompt claiming it as their own. This is where traditional education comes into play. Rather than making AI a touchy subject, we need to invite students to use and experiment with it. At the same time model what is appropriate and inappropriate to use. An example of an appropriate use case could be providing writing prompts for a persuasive essay or offering suggestions on how to improve a piece. An inappropriate use case would be providing an AI program with a question and then copy/paste the exact response to use for your answer on your assignment. Modelling these behaviours and setting out expectations is critical for fostering ethical uses of AI.
AI is growing every day with new “models” or programs being created. ChatGPT remains the dominant model that impacts our everyday conversations. New models are slowly pushing into the scene such as Perplexity which aims to provide accurate, referenced material in each response. But AI is more than just ChatGPT and Perplexity, it’s autocorrect (Grammarly, Google Read & Write), text-to-speech and speech-to-text programs, and even graphic designs on sites like Canva are AI. Part of the teaching standards is to “participate in professional learning throughout their careers” (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, n.d.). This includes learning about new innovative ways to teach students. AI is a useful tool to assist in education but must be used in an ethical way that promotes student learning and ensures academic honesty. By modelling proper use and creating strict policies AI can be a tool that shows the true potential of students.
References
Clugston, B. (2024, July 19). Advantages and disadvantages of AI in education. University Canada West (UCW). https://www.ucanwest.ca/blog/education-careers-tips/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-ai-in-education/
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. (n.d.). Teaching Standards | Nova Scotia Public School Program. https://www.ednet.ns.ca/psp/teaching-learning/teaching-standards
Fullestop. (2024, June 6). Generative AI in Education: Use Cases, Benefits, and Challenges in 2024. Fullestop Blogs. https://www.fullestop.com/blog/generative-ai-in-education-use-cases-benefits-and-challenges
Glorioso, C. (2023, February 24). Fake news? ChatGPT has a knack for making up phony anonymous sources. NBC New York. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/fake-news-chatgpt-has-a-knack-for-making-up-phony-anonymous-sources/4120307/