In recent years, there has been more and more discourse surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), especially in English classes. Teachers warn against using AI and tell stories of students being caught using it throughout the year. As students, we constantly hear warnings about AI. Most high schoolers have had experience with AI, either directly or indirectly. I would also go as far as to say most people at this school have used AI at once for one reason or another. While I think using AI to write essays and turn them in as your work is inherently wrong, AI can be a valuable tool for research and idea generation.
When I hear people mention AI, the first thing that comes to my mind is ChatGPT. ChatGPT, and AI in general, are not traditional intelligence. Chatbots like ChatGPT work by predicting the next word in a given sentence. While this method may not be the best for writing an essay or a creative writing-based assignment, ChatGPT may help provide a base level of research and writing outlines, so long as students are not overly reliant on it. I believe passing AI-generated writing as your own is both academically dishonest and a bad idea. If your goal is to get a good grade on an assignment, AI chatbots like ChatGPT spit out sentences that might be inaccurate and sound unhuman-like.
When starting a project requiring research, I often find myself unsure where to start. Sometimes, I need basic information about a topic required for research context. In these moments, I think ChatGPT would be a helpful resource. As long as the information spit out by ChatGPT is taken with a grain of salt, it can be used as a way to get quick, general information. Because of how ChatGPT works, the information it gives can be unreliable, but when feeding it general prompts it can give a solid piece of reliable context for a research topic.
The second way AI and ChatGPT could help students is idea generation. Most people have found themselves in a position of writer’s block at one point or another—I know I certainly have. One area where ChatGPT shines is in its ability to assemble a creative structure when given a prompt. Feeding AI a prompt and receiving a structure you then turn into an original piece of writing is not academic dishonesty. I believe in that situation, AI should be considered a resource for students to use. While some may make the argument that unoriginal ideas constitute cheating, I would argue that as long as you write the actual essay or story, how you come up with ideas does not matter as much.
Using ChatGPT for clear violations of academic honesty such as turning its generations in as your work is wrong and should not be allowed. However, there should be some leeway to use it as it can become a useful tool for your writing. In my experience, teachers have told me to use the resources available to produce my best writing. If AI chatbots like ChatGPT help me accomplish that, I should be allowed to use it as a writing assistant. As long as AI is used responsibly and with a fact-checking eye, it should be permissible in school.
