“Right now, AI has had a net negative impact on students,” says Dacia Toll, co-founder of Coursemojo, an AI-powered teaching assistant, in a Chalkbeat article.
“It’s going to be a complex situation — there are going to be bad use cases, good use cases,” she says. “The jury is out on what the net impact will be.”
Still, some clear realities are emerging. Here are three theories about AI’s impact in the next several years.
1) Cheating is not going away
In one recent survey, 100% of high school principals said they were concerned about “academic integrity” challenges created by AI.
AI advocates emphasize that cheating is not a new phenomenon. What is new is that generative AI has made it easier and therefore more tempting.
Some students are simply doing less work and learning less. A majority of high school students in one poll said they fear AI will harm their critical thinking.
Classroom trust could be eroding with teachers worried about cheating and students fearing being falsely accused. “You become a paranoid person. You distrust every single thing your students give you,” says Sara Falls, a high school English teacher.
The next few years will tell if schools start creating systematic strategies to combat cheating or if teachers continue to be left largely on their own.
2) AI will be a common, almost universal teaching assistant
AI is not yet a daily part of work life for most teachers. Only 1 in 8 use it on a weekly basis for teaching-related work, according to a recent poll. About half don’t use it at all. But as more teachers become comfortable with the technology, AI will be a common, perhaps universal assistant for educators.
There are risks here. Teachers could engage in the “cognitive offloading” that is feared for students. Teachers might use less care putting together lessons or rely on lower-quality material.
But AI as a teacher’s assistant could free up teacher time — one of the most valuable commodities in schools.
3) AI will never replace human tutors
OpenAI’s Vice President and General Manager of Education Leah Belsky touts the benefits of tutoring. “We all aspire for every student to have that one-on-one tutoring experience,” she says. “ChatGPT and AI could one day make that possible.”
It’s risky for AI advocates to tout massive potential gains. “If that’s the bar, then the current AI capabilities are not set up to achieve that goal,” says Toll of Coursemojo. She notes that AI is not as good as a human tutor. She believes the bar shouldn’t be set unrealistically high, though AI does have potential to boost student learning.
Chalkbeat
