THE ECHO

By Simon Klinck // Reporter  • Photo by Nikola Meissner

It’s the middle of the day, and a sophomore in digital design class who will remain anonymous is working on a poster. The poster required them to write two paragraphs, but it was too difficult, and they couldn’t get it done in time. Eventually, after much hardship, the paragraphs ended up being completed by AI.

AI is at its peak usage right now, and it seems it will not be stopping anytime soon. Oftentimes, students use many different AI websites, such as ChatGPT, to help them study and understand the subject or simply do their assignments for them. But where and why do we see this happening in the school, and what are students’ and teachers’ opinions on living with this technology every day?

“I have used AI before. I used it for helping me create stuff for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign to generate a couple of world settings and buildings,” said senior Nate Alcalde on using AI in his extracurriculars.

While using AI can be helpful for non-academic activities such as Dungeons and Dragons, when used in real schoolwork, it can hinder students’ ability to problem-solve on their own. Many people criticize how students use it instead of even trying to do their work on their own, relying on AI.

“AI is okay for some things, but not really for, like, schoolwork or a job. AI is just cool for fun,” said Alcalde.

Not only for fun, AI is also a useful tool for helping students research subjects or boost their creativity. In these cases, rather than just doing the work for them, AI helps deepen students’ understanding of subjects. It’s helping them learn.

“AI can be pretty good in some forms, like if you’re trying to do something creative or if you’re just researching something,” sophomore Samuel Rose said.

AI can be useful for those who actually want to learn a topic; by researching a topic through AI, students learn about it and find new ways to solve it for themselves. Harm is done when students use AI as a crutch to answer questions for them without learning.

“AI can also be hurtful in some ways,” said Rose. “Some people would pull up their homework and type it into ChatGPT, like the entire thing.”

But why do students use AI? Is it boredom, stress, a lack of time, or a lack of understanding?

“I think a lot of students feel pressure about grades. I think they go that route because they think the product [AI] is going to be better,” English teacher Laura Elmore said.

When it comes to using AI for classwork, the main reason is pressure. If it’s pressure to get grades up, students think of AI as something that always produces top-notch results when it really leads them astray.

“AI invents quotes that aren’t even in the original passage,” Elmore said, “It’s often trying to satisfy the user’s request, so it will put a product based on the prompt in there, and the result doesn’t fit.”

Overall, AI is a huge multi-purpose tool that can be used for an assortment of different things. In Avon High School, it can be seen all over, in our clubs, homework, and assignments. Everyone has used it, but it’s important to use it in the right way. If students just make it do their homework, they aren’t learning.

“I just don’t think it’s worth it. Most of the time, I get frustrated when I have tried to use AI for things. It just takes me longer than if I had just done it myself,” said Elmore.t just takes me longer than if I had just done it myself,” said Elmore.