This article is purely my opinion on AI in academic settings. For background, I am a sophomore cybersecurity major.
We have all heard our professors say not to use AI. There is even a section in most syllabi about using AI and LLMs. For example, in the syllabus for my Intro to Philosophy course, this section takes up about half of a page of text. If you were unaware, LLM stands for Large Language Models, which is a type of AI that understands and processes human language. Some examples are ChatGPT, Bard, Llama, Bing Chat and Gemini. Most professors that I have had are strongly against students using AI for their coursework. Sometimes, they do allow it but only if you follow certain rules and cite that you used AI.
Should college students be using AI? Personally, I think that college students should not be using AI to do their coursework. I do believe that AI can be helpful for generating questions or helping you through a problem, but we should not depend on it. AI is frequently abused in a college setting, as students use it to write their papers for them, translate for them and answer homework questions. Using AI like this is considered cheating in most academic settings, therefore I think it should not be used to do these things.
I also think that AI should not be used in academic settings because it can cause students to not learn content. If a student relies mainly on AI to do their homework and their papers, the student will not learn how to actually write papers or how to do homework, and they will also not learn the content that they need to. There is already concern that students are not learning at the same levels as in the past, and AI could definitely be adding to that.
Another reason students should not be using AI is that it can give false information. Students typically think that AI is always right and that it knows everything, but it does not. AI is trained with things that are on the internet, so that’s where all of its knowledge comes from. It tends to give answers that are incorrect. Some students may not fact check AI and then write false information on their homework or papers. This can cause students to get bad grades on their assignments. They may also get a zero on the assignment if they are caught using AI.
Once again, I don’t think that college students should be using AI or LLMs to complete their assignments. It can cause them to learn less and the information may not always be correct.