AI beyond cheating

 AI Beyond “cheating”

 

Students have embraced AI with a vengeance.  Who can blame them? It’s easy, fast and promised to be perfectly correct.   According to teachers, students have quickly caught on to AI and are using it regularly.  That’s ok with them as long as kids come clean that the work is not theirs.

But there is another more serious issue that is bothering teachers.   Teachers are very concerned that it is the perfection of AI that is most damaging.  Students are increasingly fearful that their own work just “won’t be as good”.   Thereby, putting students’ willingness to risk being wrong.  Allowing yourself to be wrong is at the very essence of creativity.  It is only when we are willing to be wrong, to step outside the acceptable box, that creativity happens.

Educators have a very dark view of what AI will do to students.  Educators- teachers, and district leaders- expect AI to have a negative impact on teens’ mental health over the next 10 years.  A full 69% feel this way.  Just 14% predict the influence will be positive.

On the other hand, just about a quarter of the teens surveyed believe AI will have a negative effect on them.  And 30% believe the impact will be positive.

What isn’t new about this news is that typically the younger generation is more accepting of new technology and educators are not only of the older generation but are usually slower to accept technology in general.

While teachers may view the “outsourcing” of writing to AI as cheating, from the students’ viewpoint this use of AI is anxiety reducing. They don't worry that they will be wrong or grammatically incorrect.   Consequently, the use of AI for written work is seen very differently by younger teens.

What is of greater concern to mental health, by both generations is the use of  AI to supercharge bullying with deepfake pornographic images of classmates.   As generative AI develops, creating these deepfake images will be easier and that kind of impact on mental health will be much greater.  There have already been multiple instances of students creating porno image so classmates and posting them on social media.  

“We have met the enemy and they are us” as the cartoon character said so many years ago.  Educators need to address the immediate issues that are now, including teaching kids the potential horror of the internet and AI.  We have work to do much beyond worrying about who has written that 5-page term paper on the causes of WWII.  AI is way beyond cheating.