my ai journey
I still remember sitting in class, freshman year of college in 2023, as our professor discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) would not be tolerated in his classroom. I remember thinking to myself “I’ll never use AI” and scoffing at even remotely opening ChatGPT. A few weeks later, I ate my words and was playing around with ChatGPT to understand how it worked. After winter break all of my classes discussed the use of AI in their syllabus. In many of my courses, AI was allowed as long as it was cited. In fact, I’ve been required to use AI for college assignments. Now, I sit at my first internship and my supervisors encourage the use of AI for specific research tasks. Additionally, career advisors have encouraged the use of AI in resumes and cover letters. I’ve gotten more responses from jobs I’ve applied to with my AI enhanced resume than without. AI being commonly used in both education and the workforce feels uncanny.
While the widespread use of AI has provided efficient benefits, I fear for the people we are becoming. I worry that we’re running away from our own intelligence and using AI as a substitute. My problem isn’t with the technology itself, it’s how we’re letting it reshape our lives. Have we let AI enhance our lives or built a life around AI?
I’m beginning to believe the latter. In college, I’ve noticed a rise in students delegating homework to AI rather than taking the time to complete assignments themselves. College life involves a never-ending cycle of assignments. Managing time efficiently can be one of the biggest hurdles in college. The temptation to use AI for assignments for classes and ease up on academic burdens is at an all time high. Using AI can prevent us from learning, and instead only teaches us how to efficiently meet assignment requirements in a timely fashion. Whether we’re retaining the information AI spits out is a completely different story.
In fact, I’ve been punished for not using AI. I’ve taken tests where I’ve watched my peers cheat and ask AI for help. Whereas, I studied, didn’t use AI, and got a worse grade for it. It’s not just because, “oh this class isn’t for my major so I’ll just cheat”, it’s happening in major-required courses too. For example, my friends in nursing programs noticed their peers using AI on every assignment, using AI to cheat on tests and failing their practical exams. Nursing students suffer from one of the most rigorous workloads a student can have, but is AI the solution to handling this workload? We’re teaching AI how to do the work – not ourselves.
studying ai
A study conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania claims that AI can do more harm than good when it comes to studying. 1,000 students were divided into three groups, one with access to ChatGPT when doing practice problems, another group with a revised AI tutor version of ChatGPT, and a control group who had no access to ChatGPT. Students who used ChatGPT solved 48% more of the practice problems correctly and peers who used the AI tutor solved 127% of the problems correctly. However, when test time came the AI proved to be of no help. Students who had access to ChatGPT when doing practice math problems scored 17% worse on tests compared to students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT.
Researchers noted two main issues with the use of ChatGPT with the practice problems: the questions students asked ChatGPT and the accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses. Students disregarded proper learning techniques and simply asked ChatGPT for the answers. Ultimately, they weren’t developing the skills that come from solving the problems themselves. In addition, ChatGPT only answered the math problems correctly about 50% of the time. However, the tutor version was directly fed the correct answers and this problem was minimized.
Another interesting revelation from this study is the use of ChatGPT creating overconfidence in students. Students filled out a survey after the experiment and shared they, “don’t think ChatGPT caused them to learn less”. Additionally, students who had help from the AI tutor thought they’d done significantly better although results beg to differ. ChatGPT gives us a learning placebo effect.
ai affecting human cognition
Click here to view.
Greg Isenberg, startup expert, shares an experience he had with a recent Stanford Grad. During their lunch, this 22-year-old college graduate continuously struggled to find the words to finish his thoughts. Isenberg asked him if he was alright. His response was…
“Sometimes I forget words now. I’m so used to having ChatGPT complete my thoughts that when it’s not there, my brain feels… slower.”
22-year-old Stanford Graduate
Apparently, he’d been using ChatGPT for nearly everything, writing, thinking, communication, etc. Isenberg shared his concerns for how AI will effect human cognition in the future.
It’s vital that we’re self-aware of the way in which we use AI to help us study and ease academic workloads. There’s a fine line between learning and making AI do the work for us. After four years, what if you obtain a degree, but virtually learned nothing?