There has been a heated debate for a while now on whether or not the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is good or bad in college. There are many pros and cons of the use of AI in college or just in general. It is a tool that we will all need to learn to use eventually, or at least that is the way we are headed. I have read articles from 15 different schools and other sources of all of the pros and cons regarding AI usage. Through this research, I have found the top three pros and the top three cons.
The first pro is the aspect of personalized learning that AI creates. You can scan in the notes you take, and it can re-organize them into different learning styles. This option is super beneficial for visual learners who work best with graphs and charts but don’t have the time in class to create them. I personally am a visual learner and have a hard time in class keeping up with writing the notes in the first place, so the option to scan my class notes into a program to organize for me into my personal learning style is so incredibly beneficial.
You also have the ability to create practice questions while studying for exams. You can scan in your handwritten notes and then ask ChatGPT to make up practice questions of different styles based off of the notes. It is an excellent study tool. You can then send in your answers and it will grade you. I have used this aspect a couple times myself and it has really helped me get the best out of each study session.
Last, you have the ability to have AI “peer review” your essays. Before submitting an essay, you can run it through Grammarly (yes Grammarly is AI) to ensure mechanically it’s written correctly. This is especially useful if you can’t get an appointment in time with the Christopher Newport University (CNU) Writing Center or have a friend or family member review it. I personally send my papers to my dad most times but when I am short on a deadline or he is busy, I have been able to use Grammarly to ensure the mechanics of my essay aren’t lacking.
AI can be an amazing study tool to aid the process but not when it is the only tool being used. Now let’s look into the top three cons regarding the use of AI in college.
The first con is the innate dependance on the tool. It’s easy to think that AI is so fast and easy to use that we can just do things at the last minute because it can just do it for us. This also leads to just making the different AI programs do the work for you, resulting in lack of creativity for people and dependance on a robot to solve our problems.
AI also increases the risk of cheating and plagiarizing. Relying on these AI platforms to complete assignments is just plain cheating. Using it to study in preparation for an exam based on your own personal notes is not cheating, but rather just using the full force of resources you have in your pocket.
Our final con is the risk of inaccurate or incomplete information. AI is still new and still being tweaked with, so we can’t fully trust that the information it provides us is all of the information out there. A good example of this is the fact that some interns at law firms are being fired because they are having ChatGPT write the documents for them, and the platform just does not have access to the databases needed for these legal documents.
There are so many other ways that AI can be harmful to our learning. Not everyone has the same access to AI tools, which can create an unfair advantage for some students. So, while these are the big three, they’re definitely not the only things to be aware of.
AI can be a great tool, however if used incorrectly, it can be detrimental to a student’s learning. All in all, it is a tool that is useful in many ways, but again has to be used correctly and in moderation. A lot of things are good in moderation, and I think AI is another great example of this concept.
