Artificial Intelligence has opened up an entirely new world to students, educators, and administrators. The potential of AI is extremely powerful, and to understand the pros and cons of AI in education is essential for making decisions.
AI is here to stay and its impact in schools will only increase as artificial intelligence further develops. It is often interpreted that when students use AI in their daily school lives, it is for cheating or plagiarizing purposes only. But in reality, there are more potential positive impacts that outweigh all of the negative impacts from AI use. From planning lessons to supporting students, schools are constantly learning where these tools are helping students and where they need limits.
One of the many pros of adaptive AI tools is being able to personally analyze student work and adjust their difficulty instantly. AI can also be used to inspire and encourage creativity, give a new perspective, summarize materials, generate or perfect teacher lesson plans, and create images from a prompt.
One of the most significant cons of artificial intelligence is its threat to students’ cognitive development by encouraging reliance on automated chatbots, which ultimately lead to cognitive atrophy, diminished critical thinking, and lowered problem-solving skills. Frequent use of AI for tasks leads to “cognitive offloading”, where students stop engaging in independent thinking/reasoning.
But, overall student use seems to far exceed instructor use; according to a national survey by Tyton Partners in 2023, 27% of the students admitted to being frequent users of an AI chatbot, in contrast to only 9% of teachers.
It is in teacher’s best interests to understand the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence and be aware of hindrances this technology also gives.
In all, AI is not inherently bad but the misuse of it is extremely harmful. According to the College of Education at Illinois, the key is to develop AI literacy among students so they can distinguish between valid and incorrect information. The future of AI is in balancing its benefits with human teaching methods.
Freshman Chloe Feliciano shared her opinion on AI usage, “I believe that AI can definitely be used to benefit students by creating study guides, practice tests, or flashcards. But, it is a very powerful tool that can be easily manipulated to do anything that the user asks it to.”
