UNPOPULAR AI OPINION...

I am probably one of the few people in this class who is very skeptical about AI (Artificial Intelligence). The thought of AI having the ability to learn exponentially and do things better than humans is quite scary to be honest. It’s easy to say “look at all the good it can do!” but in my opinion, the good doesn’t really matter if it kills us in the end.

From a medical perspective, I think there are really great possibilities. I am type one diabetic and AI makes it possible for my continuous glucose monitor to predict what my blood sugar will be in the next 30 minutes and increase or reduce the amount of insulin my insulin pump gives me without me even thinking about me. It could lead to a number of diseases being cured, which is really great! However, if it can find a cure for these diseases, people could also ask it to create a disease resistant to treatments or antibiotics. In my opinion, just because there is the ability or possibility to do something doesn’t necessarily mean we should and there are obviously so many examples of this in human history. I do not want to see everything it is capable of. AI does not have true emotion or morals, it only has the data that it has been fed and that is really freaky to me. Also the currently exploration and development towards Artificial Super Intelligence is really terrifying.

From an academic perspective, I also think it’s going to destroy academic integrity because now with the capability to find sources to back up basically any claim, who’s to say what’s true or not? I also don’t really know how it would work if once there is a significant amount of AI generated text and data online, the newly trained AI will be learning from AI? And AI is known for being very biased. I also think it will make education a lot more difficult because now you have to find ways around students being able to use AI to do all of their assignments. And the AI detection programs are already super unreliable, like turnitin. It is creating more work for teachers (that I think we frankly don’t need).

If you’re an elementary teacher, I can absolutely see the appeal of AI because of how much it can automate mundane tasks. But for middle school and especially high school teachers, I think it adds a lot more work. I could totally be wrong too, and I might just be a pessimist or inexperienced. Or maybe I have simply read and watched too many dystopian science fiction books. I am not the type of person who believes in conspiracy theories or outlandish claims at all, I just think that the threat of biological or nuclear warfare or our world becoming too automated and losing control of AI leading to the extinction of humans is really scary, as talked about in class. I mean the world will obviously continue with or without humans but my heart breaks at how scary it would be for a human person to see the end of the human race. 

Anyways, despite my skepticism and pessimism, I had to try out AI this week for this blog post. I decided to check out MagicSchool.ai and I will be honest, I do think there are some things I could see myself using this for. Some of the features I found particularly interesting were the “song generator”, “jeopardy review game”, “group work generator”, “multiple explanations”, “real world connections”, science labs”, “accommodation suggestions”, “make it relevant”, multiple choice assessment generator”, and AI-resistant Assignments”.

I think I would use these most often because I am hoping to teach high school science and I think these tools could be used to help get my students engaged by having fun activities, making the content more relevant to their lives, giving them new ways to study, and could help make my classroom more equitable by finding appropriate accommodations for my students. I think the jeopardy game generator would be a really fun way to get my highschool students engaged.

As someone who is very anti-students using AI for assignments, I really like the AI-Resistant Assignments tool. I know there are a lot of different opinions about students using AI and the opinion that it is hypocritical for teachers to use it but expect students not to, but I think there are a lot of things adults and professionals do that minors and nonprofessionals cannot do.

I did enjoy the tools used for generating questions that can help students think deeper about topics but I think the way the students are assessed for these questions is concerning because they could ask AI to answer it for them and because AI is getting smarter and smarter, it’s going to be much more difficult to be able to tell what the student’s work is and what was created by AI.

The one thing I am unsure of but am open to learning more about is the use of AI in grading, feedback, thank you notes, emails, report card comments, and lesson plans/presentations. The reason is that I think that some of these things should be genuine and authentic, especially feedback, report card comments, and thank you notes. I think it is much more meaningful to parents and students when feedback is tailored specifically towards a student and their work.

My concern about AI generated lesson plans, unit plans, and presentations is the potential for perhaps unintentional misinformation and bias, as AI has been known for. I think it could be a part of the process for sure, but I don’t think it should completely replace the manual work. I think it could definitely be used to help find different activities or ways to help the students learn, but I think it should definitely be fact checked and critically examined before actually using it in a classroom.

We did an activity in ECS 203 where we analyzed an AI generated unit plan and it was full of errors, bias, and misinformation so the thought of this becoming a routine part of education is a little scary for me.

I know this post was really long so if anyone did stick around to read it all, thank you! I know there are probably a lot of people who are going to disagree with me and I am all open and would love to hear others opinions on this because like I said, I am young (19) and I am not as experienced as a lot of the people in this class and I really value everyone's advice and experiences. I will say that I do think there is practical use for AI, and I can definitely see myself using it for different things in my personal life and in my career as an educator. I am just very cautious about where AI is headed.

 Please leave a comment to let me know your opinions, I would really love to read them! :)