It’s 11:30 pm on a Friday night. You have a huge paper due at 11:59 p.m, and have hardly even started typing. You turn to a reliable source, ChatGPT.

AI – also known as Artificial Intelligence – has swept the scene when it comes to education. Blowing up in the recent months due to advancements in this technology, students and teachers alike have either loved it or hated it. The impact and feedback depends on whether it’s the student or teacher using the AI software.

Artificial Intelligence by definition is a set of technologies that enables computers or smartphones to perform a variety of advanced tasks, such as the ability to see, understand and translate spoken and written language, analyze data, make recommendations and much more. 

As time progressed, AI advanced more and more, to the point where in education, it can solve any math problem, write you short essays as well as create artwork all within seconds.

“Art is about creation that comes from imagination and creativity and creating art out of a robot isn’t the same. There is no process and there is nothing unique” said senior Emma LeBlanc.

There are tons of AI programs that benefit students, teachers or both. Some examples consist of Quizlet, Duolingo, PhotoMath and recently popular ChatGPT.

ChatGPT has taken over the education world for students when it comes to writing essays or paragraphs. Say you have to write a paragraph on the importance of something for history class. With ChatGPT, tell it to write you a paragraph on said topic, and in seconds a paragraph will be constructed. ChatGPT has been known to hide plagiarism, making it seem like the student wrote the entire paragraph or essay. 

With these advancements, students are able to have AI type their essays for them as well as other work that requires writing. This negatively affects the learning process for the students – relying on a source of AI to write for them.

“We look to see if students have mastered skills like writing for tone, developing appropriate language and sentence structure, sensory language and appropriate detail, AI is a hindrance to that because students don’t learn the skill” said english teacher Sarah Scuton

When it comes to plagiarism, a new form of AI has been developed in order to prevent ChatGPT. Instead of being able to type articles for you, this AI will tell you whether or not work has been completed legitimately, or if the student used ChatGPT. Using this software eliminates the possibility of a student using ChatGPT on essays or other writing assignments.

Photomath is another AI program students use. This program has students take pictures of math problems and in seconds, similar to ChatGPT, solves the problem for you in seconds. However, this allows students to learn how to do the problems they are struggling with correctly, as it provides a step by step on how to solve the problem, as well as giving the answer. 

Some AI’s provide better study strategies. Duolingo and Quizlet are prime examples of this type of software.

Duolingo is an AI software that allows for students to learn languages at their own pace, assigning different categories to learn about in each language, such as food or numbers. As they learn at their own pace, this allows the students to better understand the language they are studying as well as take their time with it. Quizlet on the other hand is a primary studying tool for students alike. Not being AI generated, it is considered to be an AI where students can create their own virtual study sheets with flashcards, matching games and more. This can create better study habits for students as well as increase their knowledge on the subjects they are learning about.

AI has been around for a while now, and with constant advancements, education has changed as a whole. Teachers can connect with their students easier, students can solve math problems with a simple picture as well as get an AI written statement for writing assignments. As time goes on, who knows what types of AI will be in the future.

“Students are going to be going into careers that AI writing will be a time saver, so learning how to recognize both its strengths and its limitations is important,” said Scruton.