In more recent years, students all over the world, especially in the U.S., have been using AI as a source to help them with fast information, writing assistance, and overall guidance for day-to-day needs. Some students see AI as an easy way out of doing assignments, essays, and projects, which gives schools grounds to put restrictions and limitations on using AI. However, other students use AI for assistance and guidance on how to do things themselves, so they learn how to do it instead of cheating.  

Schools should not see how students are using AI and take it away or punish students if they use it. Schools should teach students, before high school, soft and hard skills and critical thinking, which are the prerequisites for the basic knowledge on how to correctly use AI. In order for students to ask questions about artificial intelligence, the prior understanding of using critical thinking, problem solving, and overall common sense is needed to decipher if the information that AI is giving you is correct or false. In addition to that, having the ability to analyze, decipher, be creative, and use technical skills is also very critical. AI doesn’t always provide true information, but takes an overall pattern from sources, and combines that with words for the answer it provides. AI can be a very useful tool once students have the basics of hard and soft skills. Which is not to say students don’t have hard and soft skills, it’s that those skills are not applied to the extent that they should at a certain age of a student’s life. Critical thinking is another key component to the basic understanding of what AI could and should really be used for. 

Dr. Neigel, “At this point, there is a legitimate concern that the use of AI will impede student learning if they offload important critical thinking, understanding, and writing processes to AI.  As students progress through high school and have developed the requisite skills needed, I believe that they will have a better idea on how to appropriately use AI to augment and support the learning process”. 

Students have to be able to be adaptable, emotionally intelligent, strong communicators, and good problem solvers, in order to tell if the information that is being received from AI is true or not. Which are all things that are going to have to be used once a student graduates from high school and/or college. 

 Schools have every right to be concerned about how students are somewhat abusing AI in the classroom. If the concern from schools; which is understandable since school is about learning not cheating, was pivoted to a view on having AI being tolerated to a certain extent, would make students not be so sneaky. 

School is meant to prepare students for the future, whether that is in an academic or athletic sense. AI has and is being used in many different industries that many students may be interested in going into one day. Students should be taught how to use AI correctly because the real world isn’t going to start from scratch and teach everyone how to do some things that should have been taught when they were younger.  AI is being used in careers from finance to real estate, and it’s helping them achieve things more efficiently and faster. The medical field has been using AI for over six decades and counting. Law uses AI to analyze long and in-depth documents, coming up with strategies, reviewing contracts, etc. Many more industries use AI, which is why it is crucial that students get the basics of how to use it correctly instead of getting incentives to cut corners. In order for students to get a broader understanding on why AI isn’t allowed to be used, the instruction on why schools don’t want students using it should be explained. 

Mr Pair, an English at BHS says, “Again oversimplifying the conundrum, simply banning something doesn’t solve the problem; it just makes us better at hiding it. We absolutely need to educate on the dangers of AI use, which is something I do with the senior A-level classes in the second semester. We’re starting to see some of the consequences of overreliance on the technology with the cognitive decline of its users-”. 

Besides, schools have the right to not want students to cheat, because no student will truly understand what they are being taught if all they do is look up answers from a source that may or may not be giving them the right information. Adapting to the future, which is artificial intelligence whether we like it or not, is going to help students thrive in their future careers and overall lives. 

Older generations like Baby Boomers, Gen X, and even Millennials have had to adapt to new technology because, in order to grow, you have to adjust. If teachers want students to succeed in the real world, adaptation is one of many fundamental things that need to be taught. AI can give tips and tricks on how to go about something, but it can not solve every life problem that someone might have. AI won’t just go away like it was never around, it’s just going to keep on advancing. Which is scary to think about, unless teachers prepare students for the opportunities that will come with knowing how to go about AI in the future. School is a place for students to grow and prepare for life after high school, not a place where opportunities to learn things that life outside of high school are already using and advancing on, are cut off.