Dating back to late 2022, the easy accessibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has lead to mass use.
Students have been using AI since its inception, whether that is exploring on their own or using it to do their school work. This has alarmed teachers since they now have to worry about students using AI for their assignments. Computer science teacher Kimberly Gustin said that AI has many purposes that could be positive if used properly. “AI could be beneficial in some cases, for example it could be used to take text and verbalize it for someone who is blind to hear,” Gustin said.
When it comes to students using it in class, Gustin said that using AI to do school work can negatively affect students’ learning. “I don’t recommend high school students to use it because they need to understand the material,” Gustin said.
Right now there are over 500 platforms that students can use to experiment with AI. Out of all them the ones that students are most familiar with are ChatGPT and Snapchat AI. ChatGPT is built into a web browser while Snapchat AI is accessible through social media app Snapchat. “I think ChatGPT is used a lot specifically for older people while snap [Snapchat] is used mostly amongst teens,” freshman Nathan Neches said.
Neches said that he does not have AI do his school work for him and he mostly uses it to learn information about sports. Neches finds AI to be inaccurate at times and sound less human-like compared to ChatGPT. “I really just use it to answer more realistic questions. Sometimes I feel that it isn’t exactly correct but most of the time it seems right,” Neches said.
Junior Lily Kendall also does not use AI much but she said that it can be fun to play around with. When she does use it though, she typically goes to use Snapchat AI because of its easy access. “Snapchat AI is what I will use if I ever do use AI but it is not very accurate so that’s why I don’t use it for important things,” Kendall said.
AI is still a relatively new technology for students, but they see it playing a role in their life at some point. Kendall and Neches said that it could be beneficial for students to use as a resource or reference but not something that they should rely on. “I think AI can be helpful and I hear about a lot of people using it, but I don’t think it is something to use all the time,” Kendall said.
Other options include Deepseek AI, Meta’s AI and others from popular tech companies. One of the biggest advantages that ChatGPT has is that it seems to be more familiar to students as it was one of the first to become popular and has a simple user interface. “I like ChatGPT, it is easy for me to use and is easy to navigate when asking questions,” Neches said.
