How students should use AI¶

Over the past few semesters at my university the english department faculty has engaged in a number of discussions about the place that AI does, or does not have in general education writhing classes. Various teachers have strong opinions about this topic and I have herd from more than one teacher that in those conversations they learned that everyone has strong, thought out and logical reasoning for their stance. I believe this is a powerful statement about the nature of this argument There is no one right answer.

The Temptation¶

As AI continues to improve it will become increasingly tempting for students to send a prompt to AI, pass it through a 'Humanizer' (an AI tool designed to bypass AI detection software) and turn it in as original work. It can be tempting to argue against AI saying 'it cant do this' or 'it hallucinates sources' every argument in that line of thinking will soon be eliminated as machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLM) continue to improve. This path seems to be inevitable, Gartner, a leading global research and advisory company, estimates that in 2026 worldwide AI spending will total $2.52 trillion Gartner (2026). This spending represents a unprecedented investment in technology and will result in staggering improvements to AI. A deeper root must be found to describe why AI shouldn't do everything for us.

Human produced material has a distinct quality that AI doesn't have simply because human content is human, something that machines will never be.

There are a number of things I believe set Humans apart from AI two major ones are the development of human skill and the real transfer of emotions.

Human development of skill¶

I recently saw a post online that made me chuckle

McCoy, Julia; Bredderman, Will (2024)

Despite the sarcastic nature of Mr. Bredderman's reply, I believe that this hits the nail on the head: educators don't ask students to "write a pop-culture, analysis for the sake of there being one more pop-culture analysis in the world, [they] ask [students to] write to help [students] grow and [develop critical thinking skills]" Head, Samuel (2026).

I believe that we cannot say 'Because AI can do it, students shouldn't' but that doesn't mean that changes do not need to be made. There are many artifacts that remain in the modern education system that have little pedagogical value, this can be a massive waste of student and faculty time. Noriko Arai a AI expert and researcher at the Japanese National Institute of Informatics was asked if she thought there needed to be a urgent revolution in education considering the approaching wave of AI, her response provides a guiding ideas for discussions on this topic.

Yes, yes, yes. Because we humans can understand the meaning. That is something which is very, very lacking in AI. But most of the students just pack the knowledge without understanding the meaning of the knowledge, so that is not knowledge, that is just memorizing, and AI can do the same thing. So we have to think about a new type of education. Arai, Noriko (2017).

This leads to a question that is essential to consider in any decision on AI or education in general — What are we trying to teach students, and why is this important to their lives? This is a question that does not have a one size fits all answer.

Emotional Impact¶

Recently I was writing a piece on human rights and transparency in the intelligence arm United States DHS, over the course of my research I was studying the impact of Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks on government transparency. I came across a video that showed the murder of 2 journalists and 2 children by US air assets. As I was watching the video I cried, I then continued to write with emotion and when it came time to present my research I did so with passion. I already believed that transparency by the government was important, This experience cemented in me why it is important.

What Should Students Do¶

As students we must carefully consider how we want to us AI in our education. You will be presented with opportunities to use AI in your schoolwork, it can be a valuable tool that will free up your time to work on other projects, learn more information, and improve yourself, but your use of AI can never cost you, and must always argument, opportunities to grow your understanding and skill.

If you are too flippant in your use of AI you will forgo valuable learning opertunituies, and loose a type of substrate level intelligence that makes humans, human.