13 HCC students were anonymously polled on their AI usage using google forms, and the majority admitted to using ChatGPT to complete assignments.
The sample size is too small to represent how the student body feels about the topic, but the results demonstrate the ways in which some have become reliant on it for things like idea generation and problem solving, and in some cases, the detriment this can have on academic growth.
What is ChatGPT?
Though you can receive answers to the questions you ask, Open AI’s ChatGPT Is NOT a search engine: it just gives you human gathered and produced data from the internet.
You can use it to make workout routines, summarize long passages, and even write break up texts! It’s no wonder students utilize this seeming marvel to save time on assignments
“AI has time and time again served to be of great use to me in both my academic and personal life,” student #8 answered to the prompt of how AI has benefited them. “Whenever I’m stuck on a math problem or find myself undecided on what to do in a particular predicament, that’s when AI comes in.”
“It’s wonderful,” another simply said.
But when it’s not?
Most surveyors do not think that their reliance on AI has negatively impacted them, but for those that have become dependent on it, it has eroded the joy of learning.
“I used to enjoy writing but now I don’t write much because I let AI do it for me.”
Writing is a way of thinking, and if students aren’t critically thinking about the texts they’re assigned, then they aren’t learning anything.
Using AI as a crutch can quickly turn into dependence, and it is not something you should trust with your academic career because of how it makes up things like articles, studies, and cases. AI cannot give you evidence for claims, because its main function is to mimic human conversation.
The Ugly
Exploitation
According to TIME, workers in Kenya were paid less than $2 an hour to sift through descriptions of various types of abuse to make it safe for work.
One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. (Perrigo, 2023)
Deadly misinformation
A new side hustle is using ChatGPT to write books.
Publishing uninspired cash grabs is not a crime, but when guides telling people that poisonous mushrooms are edible, it’s clear that AI could lead to endangerment.
Enviornmental Impact
Finally, it’s messing up the environment.
The training centers not only use up A LOT of water— 700,000 litres—“For a simple conversation of 20-50 questions, the water consumed is equivalent to a 500ml bottle…” According to the source, ChatGPT also produces 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide.
