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AI is a Superpower When it Comes to Helping Students Learn.
A student is really struggling in math class; they can’t grasp the concept, and they have a quiz in two days. What do they do? The student turns to AI for help because it can give immediate feedback, explain the concept in simpler terms, and the student won’t need to pay for the help.
AI can make learning much more efficient by giving students specialized personal support to accommodate individual learning speeds and styles. When students are in class, it moves very quickly, it can be hard to ask questions, and sometimes it is just hard to understand specific topics. On the other hand, students who advance quickly may feel bored if they have to wait for struggling students to catch up. With AI, however, students who are struggling can ask an unlimited amount of questions to help themselves grasp the topic better. These students can ask for something to be explained in simpler terms or even get an analogy to help illustrate a subject better. Not to mention the benefit of these students not slowing the entire class down while still getting the help they need to catch up. Meanwhile, students who are ahead can ask questions about other topics or even take a look at future units, all while not confusing the class by asking those questions. Furthermore, according to this article from MH Education, AI models can help predict what topics students are ready to learn next and can help identify which students are struggling, allowing the teacher to step in and help earlier. It is estimated that 60% of teachers use AI in their classrooms.
Not only does AI make learning student-specific, but it also helps students and teachers save time, which can be used for more in-depth thinking. One of AI’s strengths is that it can help generate ideas in seconds. During a project, students can spend more time actually practicing the skill the teacher intends for them to learn rather than using precious time brainstorming the topic they want to do. More importantly, AI gives immediate feedback and help. Rather than having to spend a study period asking a teacher about a topic, waiting weeks for an English paper to have its grammar looked at, or needing to wait till the math homework is graded to see how to solve question four, students can simply ask AI and have help in an instant. AI can also create study materials like tests, quizzes, and flashcards in an instant rather than students having to either create them by hand or type them out and print them – more time studying and less time preparing to study.
AI doesn’t just address time issues however, it also addresses monetary struggles. AI is widely available and can give high-quality feedback to students who might not have the money to pay for tutoring or a private education. Say you have a student who is struggling, their family can’t afford a private tutor, and the kid is attending a very large school where they can’t get the personal support they need. What does the family do? What does the kid do? The child can use AI to help them and give them the specialized support that they need at zero cost for the family. Often, this access to extra help can make a significant difference in how the student performs. According to this article by Holston Academy, AI has the capability to reduce the gap between students who perform “well” and students who perform “poorly” by 20%.
Some may argue that AI is misleading or that students can use AI to cheat which will inhibit students’ learning. They may argue that AI will cause students to lose core skills when it comes to writing or making presentations, for example. These arguments do represent valid concerns, however, the simple counter to these points is that when AI is used to help students understand concepts or topics, it will in fact help students learn rather than inhibit them. For the concern about AI accuracy, this is why it is important to fact check AI across class sources, personal research, and notes. By doing this, students are learning to evaluate text and information, which further strengthens critical thinking skills. I like to compare AI to the calculator; at first, educators feared that the calculator would spell the end of all basic mathematics, but it actually has become a staple in the math classroom, allowing students to solve complex equations extremely efficiently. Also, it has not led to the end of all arithmetic skill.
AI, when used properly, can be an instrumental tool in helping students learn. It can give immediate intelligent feedback to almost everyone across the world and can unlock a new level of education for students. This is why I believe that schools should be leaning into AI rather than away from it. Students should be taught how to use it in a way that can help them understand topics better and save time, rather than being told to stay away from it altogether. As Sal Khan (the founder of Khan Academy) once said, “We are at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.”
AI’s Detrimental Effects on Students’ Learning BY Bode Wild
Picture this: a lazy student has an essay due the next morning, and hasn’t even started it. He opens ChatGPT, puts in a prompt, and instantly has a seemingly flawless 5-paragraph essay. However, what he doesn’t realize is that his essay is plagiarized, full of bias and incorrect information, and that he is hurting his critical thinking skills.
Students who spend significant time with AI chatbots like ChatGPT become socially isolated and less collaborative, and their critical thinking skills decline. A common study method among students is to have AI quiz them on a topic, or make a practice test for them to use. However, relying entirely on AI for all learning has significant downsides. A study from the National Library of Medicine found that “technostress (i.e., the anxiety and discomfort that individuals experience when interacting with new technologies) can negatively affect both mental health and academic performance.” AI use also increases loneliness when students rely on it as their only academic support. Reliance on it gets rid of collaborative learning activities, such as group studying. AI overuse weakens critical thinking. Key brain regions like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, which are responsible for decision-making and critical thinking, become weakened by reliance on AI. The same National Library of Medicine study found that “Over-reliance on AI may diminish interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, leading to social isolation and anxiety.”
While AI can hurt studying skills and mental health, it also gives information that is biased or completely incorrect. When using an AI tool like ChatGPT, it’s easy to believe that the info it gives you is all factual. However, AI uses sources from all over the internet, and some may be biased or incorrect. A 2024 study found that ChatGPT gives wrong answers up to ¼ of the time. A common argument in support of AI is that personalized answers give better, specific, tailored results. However, these results come with interaction bias, when information given is tailored to the opinion of the user, rather than a connection to the truth. When AI gathers information from many different sources, some of them can be implicitly biased, compounding the problem further. A study by Columbia Journalism found that “Chatbots were generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn’t answer accurately, offering incorrect or speculative answers instead.”
Another drawback of AI is that it encourages academic dishonesty and plagiarism. A 2024 study found that 60% of high school teachers had to deal with AI-related academic honesty problems in their students. AI models make it easy for students to cheat and plagiarize. Like the student mentioned in the opening, it’s much easier to type in a prompt and press enter than to spend hours researching and writing. When students use AI to write essays for them, it forces teachers to use AI checkers, which are inaccurate themselves. This causes distrust on both sides. Emmanuel College maintains that, “With the introduction of ChatGPT in November of 2022, … surveys indicate that 70% to 80% of high school students and 50% to 70% of college undergraduates have cheated on assignments.”
Some may argue in favor of AI’s efficiency. While AI completes tasks much faster than humans do, the incredible speed comes at a cost. AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini need large data centers to compute their answers. These data centers put strain on local power grids. A single message sent to ChatGPT uses 5 times more electricity than a Google search. This begs the question, what is more important: efficiency or environmental sustainability?
Bill Gates said, “Artificial Intelligence will evolve to become a superintelligence. We need to be mindful of how it’s developed and ensure that it aligns with humanity’s best interests.” These best interests, I believe, mean restricting students’ access. AI shouldn’t be completely banned in classrooms, but it should be well-controlled. The question now should be: how does Friends Select deal with the AI issue?
