AI Is Here

We're honestly conflicted about AI use and have nuanced views about AI, recognizing both its benefits and risks. Many of us see it as an inevitable part of education that needs to be managed rather than avoided:

"AI is not a replacement for teachers or education but a modern tool to help and assist students and education overall. Research has proven that a student's perspective on AI is as productive as having an assistant." - From "The Two-Year Test: Finding Balance in AI Education"

"It's a 50/50 chance when it comes to the usage of AI, students really do use AI (CHATGPT) as a way to have outlined/brainstorm ideas but on the other hand, it can negatively impact skills that can potentially be lost" -  from "Decoding Complexity: AI as Student and Teacher's Assistant"

"Students are now using Chad GPT and other AI tools to do the work for them. They're not they're not creating their own answers and they use it like how she said to copy and paste. And you can tell because other students have the same exact answers. Sometimes they use these tools to do the assignments for them, not even for help, and they're not citing. And it's just very dishonest for a lot of students to use this." - from, "Think for Yourself"

""Having the ability to paste just the whole text in there and tell this robot to summarize this and then you could just put that information into a paraphraser. and submit it. It makes your work so much easier, but it also takes away from your creative writing ability..." - from, "The Impact of AI on Creative Writing"

"But unfortunately, students, college students, high school students, possibly even middle school students at this point, they will find loopholes and there are ways to like keep using AI undetected. As much as there's technologies to keep detecting AI, there's going to be technologies to make AI undetectable." - from, "Digital Divides"

"When I look back at my experience with AI,  I could say that it actually helped me a lot in regards to simplifying information that my professors have posted online, but I didn't really get, the information that I needed from it. It's created like  study guides for me for my upcoming exams. And  yeah, I feel like that was really helpful. But I think about it sometimes and I think about how  AI actually sometimes makes me forget to actually intake information." - from, "Ethics in the AI Era"

"That's the biggest issue when it comes to the use of AI. Are we actually learning? Are we actually going to be able to apply this outside of the classroom?" - from "Ethics in the AI Era"

"Professors should know that students will use AI, especially since technology is growing so fast that it's going to be inevitable. Like people are going to use it." - from "Recitation Nerds"

We primarily use AI for:

Writing Support and Completion

"I'll use AI sometimes to help me like structure an essay or something or I'll put like what I put my paragraph and put it into AI to like reword it to make it sound maybe a little more educated." -  From "Tool to Taboo: Rethinking AI in Student Life"

"Students are not trying to use artificial intelligence as a replacement of a teacher or a replacement of thinking and doing your own work, but as just a helping tool. And I think that can be a great example of something like Grammarly, building our vocabulary." - From "Time Well Spent?"

"They fully use it as a crutch instead of something to benefit themselves because I feel like a lot of people like say for an essay, they put the essay prompts in and whatever and they ask AI to produce something for them rather than them giving AI what they produce are writing and saying, 'Hey, how can I better this?' Right? So, they're asking more of AI for the full answer instead of just being like, 'Oh, hey, can this benefit me in any way or make my writing better?'" - From "The AI Crutch"

"I personally only use AI to brainstorm when I'm writing a script. So, for example, to expand on a character story or figuring out ways to enhance a character, I also only use AI on those little tedious assignments in class that I don't really care about, like writing short stories. Instead of spending 5 hours writing a story at my desk, I can just get chat GBT to do it and then with some editing, it only really takes me an hour." - From "Pixel Perfect"

"In terms of essays, I do see the same visions as you guys a lot of times. I do write all my essays by myself.  I do use chat GBT as a formatting method. For example, what I should expand on, which paragraph should I talk about what topic...I think using AI for those type of things is definitely a helpful thing....I've gotten some good scores using ChatGPT to format stuff. So I think for that it's definitely a great use."- From "Decoding Complexity"

Understanding Complex Topics

"16 out of 20 university students find topics easier to understand using AI" and "72-80% of students in complex subjects like physics prefer AI-assisted learning" - From "Grades vs. Growth: The Hidden Costs of AI in Learning"

But we are actively worried about dependency:

"I sometimes want to do it the easy and quick way, but like I I don't sit there and like, you know, kind of take in that information. I feel like that seems to be the problem." - From "Decoding Complexity"

"The more they depend on AI for assignments, the less they use their own ideas and problem solving skills." - From "Think for Yourself"

"I first started using it just to get through an assignment that I didn't want to do and it got easy from there because it does get more advanced though. Like we said, we use it for like little stuff. If it’s actually reliable,  I feel like I would fall into the trap of using it for everything if it actually like  better than my own brain." - From "Critical Thinking in Crisis"

"That's all my friends do now. Just try ChatGPT it ... it's just like something that has been integrated into my daily life that I can't like avoid anymore." - From "The AI Crutch"

"In educational settings today, it almost feels as if everyone is using AI to help with their assignments in some way...it's crucial to notice and change the habit of leaning on AI for our education, which is more easily said than done, but with most of our work being technology-related, like on our computers, phones, where  the internet is so easily accessible, it is an easy shortcut."- From "The Human Cost"

"There is a current discussion on AI ethics and the role of technology in educational equity. People are concerned that many of them will not be able to live without AI. Our students are questioning how highly they will depend on AI in their educational life." - From "AI Bandits"