Although I can’t say I’m personally thrilled about it, it’s clear that generative AI and other chatbot-style AIs are here to stay. There hasn’t been any shortage of professors emphasizing it either; I’ve found that every professor I have now has very strict policies regarding AI that they heavily stress.
And rightfully so! In a place of higher education where so much of what we learn is applicable to our everyday life in the near future, we as students have the responsibility to make sure we’re actually learning our respective course material. I don’t know if it’s just my TikTok For You Page, but I’ve seen a lot of videos recently about future doctors, lawyers, etc. using AI to write their essays and do their assignments without retaining anything, and while I understand that this doesn’t happen as often as it’s portrayed online, there is a fear present with every field that comes with the possibility that AI could be doing our coursework for us.
Like I said, I don’t think the development of AI is all that beneficial, especially with all the other technology that we already have available (like when I Google something and it comes up with a highlighted, one-sentence answer and a link to the website it’s from! I don’t need an AI summary of the same thing right above it). But big tech companies have made it abundantly clear that it’s not going anywhere. So, here are some of my personal favorite ways to use AI as a student to help with my homework and everyday life, not to do everything for me.
“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
ā€”Author Joanna Maciejewska
School Help
Essays
Whenever I write any type of essay or paper, I’m paranoid about my clarity. I think I have a pretty good handle on grammar, but the occasional typo can slip through the cracks that general spell/grammar checkers might not catch if the word is still a real word, making the sentence confusing in the least and changing the entire meaning of the sentence at most. Plus, I’m a rambler, so if a sentence or paragraph is really wordy but still makes sense in my head, it often doesn’t make sense to others.
I will often put my essay into ChatGPT and ask it to check for grammatical errors and clarity. What I like the most about using ChatGPT as opposed to other programs like Grammarly is that I can ask ChatGPT to look at my paper exactly how I want it to. I gave it a short paper to look over the other day, and it began making changes to vocabulary and sentence structure that didn’t feel authentic to my writing style anymore. This happens often, so instead of ignoring its suggestions, I can ask it to try again while still maintaining my personal writing voice and only slightly altering anything unclear.
Additionally, when I’m in the early stages of writing, I usually will start with an outline. When my outline is finished, I can put it into ChatGPT along with the original question or prompt and ask if it my outline covers everything the question is asking about in enough detail. It’s like asking a friend or classmate to check your outline or paper, but faster and more accurate (although a second opinion from a human could never be a bad thing).
studying
One thing I have figured out as a music major is that AIs are not very well trained on music theory material, which is the music course I struggle with the most. However, knowing that the AI is so often wrong has actually been a useful study tool/homework checker for me. If I ask ChatGPT what the notes are in a certain scale and it gives me the wrong notes, it actually helps me learn by figuring out what’s wrong about it and correcting it.
I don’t personally use this feature a lot, but I know many other students who will use AI to create a study guide, summarize the notes they took, and use AIs like ChatGPT to quiz them in real time. If you have a study guide, you can copy and paste it into a program like ChatGPT and ask it to generate questions about the material to make sure you know it. It’s easy to see how it could actually be an effective studying method for a lot of people; instead of just looking at the material and trying to memorize, you can utilize more active studying techniques.
Already existing websites and apps that are well-known study aides also have similar features that come from AI. For example, Quizlet has a feature where you can upload a study guide or other materials and it will make flashcards for you. It’s hard to say if features like these are 100% accurate, like it would be with any other AI program, but it is a helpful tool and a way to use AI to your advantage as a student in order to learn rather than using it to do all of your work for you.
everyday help
food
Hands down, my favorite way that I’ve figured out how to use generative text AIs like ChatGPT is having it create grocery lists and/or meal plans for me. As a college student, making the time to grocery shop and not only plan but also make elaborate, healthy meals every single day is difficult. To take some of the mental load off, you can actually ask ChatGPT to create a meal plan for a week, two weeks, or however long you want. You can be specific about your requirements, like how many calories you want to consume, your goals regarding more specific contents like protein or carbs, how many meals per day or week you want, and other dietary restrictions or just things you don’t like.
Once again, I really do like how specific you can be and how much you can customize the results. Plus, it’s so easy to go back and change something if you don’t like the result. For example, I don’t like chocolate, so if too many of the snacks given in the meal plan are chocolate, I can just ask for the AI to remove everything containing chocolate and replace it with something else.
Doing this really gets me out of my comfort zone when it comes to meals, and, since it’s generated by an AI and not a real person, I don’t feel bad if I don’t follow it to a T. Especially when it comes to grocery lists, I have found new foods in the stores that I frequent simply because AI recommended them to me.
trips
More than any other young person I’ve seen, my mom is addicted to using ChatGPT. She asks it all sorts of questions and loves to have it giver her ideas for things, and her favorite thing to ask it about is trip itineraries. We took a road trip this past summer, and every time we stopped in a random town, she would ask me to ask ChatGPT to recommend some good restaurants in the area.
Plus, it can generate some pretty good ideas for things to do on a vacation if you’re sitting at a hotel not sure what to do. It can estimate how long each activity would take you and provide other information that you ask it about.
Although, probably coolest of all, AI can generate an entire trip itinerary for you. I definitely wouldn’t recommend using only ChatGPT to plan a trip for you, given that it’s not perfect and can’t account for certain things, but it’s still such a cool tool to use if you’re stuck on planning an itinerary.
On the same road trip I mentioned above, after we had created our itinerary, I plugged the whole thing into ChatGPT and asked it if the itinerary seemed reasonable and fun. It was nice to get feedback on what the trip could look like, and in all honesty (this goes for every other section too) it’s probably just helpful to write something down and have the illusion of speaking to someone else about it. I think it can help you consider options more carefully, study harder, and make your life easier without exploiting it and forgetting the knowledge, critical thinking, and talent we all have already.
