Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic in the media over the past few years because it threatens life as we know it. AI like Chat GPT specifically targets the future of school English classes, writing professions, and students. What do we know about what the future of AI’s like ChatGPT hold for our society?
The article “High School English Needed a Makeover Before ChatGPT”, written by Daniel Herman of The Atlantic, explores how students learned before and after AI became easily accessible. Many students use it to write their essays and create grammatically correct masterpieces in minutes. Herman wrote, “reckoning with the existence of generative AI may require an absolute transformation in education policy at all levels.”
With the increased use and access to AI, there are many fears over how students will write, how teachers will continue instruction, and how this will affect communication in our society.
Bucks Literature Professor Dr. Stephen doCarmo sees both positives and negatives with the use of ChatGPT and AI in the classroom. He said, “I’m totally ready to accept AI’s usefulness as, say, a tutor in content-dense courses. But I think in skills-based courses like the writing and math we all have to take early on in college, it’s starting to rob us of the practice we’re supposed to be getting at complex and critical thinking.”
20-year-old Bucks marketing student Ava Odenwald also thinks that AI can be useful within the context of studying. She said, “Yeah, I use Photomath to help me study; if I am stuck and not in the tutoring center it can help light a way to find where I went wrong in the problem.”
The use of ChatGPT and AI in the classroom leaves room for the question: How will education change with higher access to artificial intelligence? Dr. doCarmo sees two routes in this path: We will preserve english and writing and continue to have our students write 5 paragraph research papers, or we will continue to integrate AI writing tools and ChatGPT potentially blurring the lines of where and when we should use this intelligence.
He said, “If we go that second route, we’ll probably tell ourselves that being able to think well enough to prompt ChatGPT or Claude to produce a particular document we need (a news article, a research paper, a grant proposal, a sonnet, a mystery novel) means we have all the thinking skills we need.”
19-year-old business administration major Cassidy Darcey also expressed concerns over AI in the classroom, saying, “I believe it will limit [students] creativity and ability to reason effectively.”
Students and staff at Bucks have both expressed concerns for the preservation of writing and education against artificial intelligence. While it is hard to accurately predict the future of our education, AI has raised concerns for the future of learners now more than ever.
Source: How will ChatGPT Change our Writing?
