Stop overhyping about AI and start thinking

Some might say that “AI will destroy the education system”, but they only say that, because they themselves rely too much on AI. In about a week, ChatGPT had over one million users and even three years later the user count continues to grow. ChatGPT is an LLM that can, among many other things, be used to write entire essays for you and cheat on tests, just like the internet could. But a few still believe that it will destroy our education system. A mistaken five-year-old might also think LLMs can do everything, but it absolutely cannot. It is just a machine trained on lots of text, mainly from the internet. In reality AI will not destroy our education system, just like the internet didn’t, it is just a tool that might improve our education system, like many would argue the internet did.

People often claim that some new technologies like ChatGPT, or the internet, will revolutionize or destroy the education system, but history shows that it rarely happens. For example, as mentioned earlier, when the internet came, we thought it would either destroy the education system, or it would revolutionize it. Even though I am not a teacher, I have never heard stories of people living around the time the internet came, that education suddenly changed. We can still cheat just as much as before the internet was introduced on exams. But it’s time to look at the topic of this essay; AI. So quite a few think it will make a difference in our education system like The Conversation does “The power of AI systems is placing a huge question mark over our education and assessment practices,”[1] but some also think it wouldn’t, just like the internet didn’t. For instance, a professor in English said that “Every year or two, there’s something that’s ostensibly going to take down higher education as we know it. So far, that hasn’t happened.”[2] So now that we know a professor, teaching in the very thing where worried AI might destroy, says that he isn’t worried, it’s up to you whether you believe in a professor or a random person from the internet writing an article in The Conversation. So, who do you believe? I personally would lay my trust in the arguments presented earlier, and the professor. If you used reason and logic, you would have come to the same conclusion, even if you excluded all the authority linked to getting the title professor.

Yet there is still the other viewpoint that ChatGPT will make a huge impact on education, commonly with versions of the argument “we haven’t seen anything like ChatGPT before.” Yes, that is indeed true, but again may I, for example, remind you before the internet we hadn’t seen anything like the internet. And yes, I know you can’t compare them exactly; hence the internet can usually not write an assignment for you, without the teacher being able to trace back where you got it from, but that is the main difference. Hence the internet can give you answers for about everything, just like ChatGPT can. AI can also be just as wrong as the internet, according to an expert referring to AI “These systems don’t have a way to distinguish true things from false things.”[3] But we might not be able to always check if they used AI, even though the opposition mentions you could trace back the use of AI, if they used ChatGPT, “OpenAI announced it was developing a “digital watermark” to embed into the chatbot’s responses. This kind of watermark is embedded as a digital signal that can identify the content as being AI-generated.”[4] But there are other reasons that this is a lame argument, hence you could also just ask a friend to write an essay for you, which would be even more untraceable than ChatGPT, without the watermark. Of course, only if he didn’t himself copy it off the internet.

It is also important to note that education has always adapted to new technologies, and many haven’t quote “revolutionized education”. For example, we have already implemented computers, and the internet, into our education system recently, and there wasn’t any big revolution. We also adapted and now use technologies feared for the same reasons as ChatGPT when they came out; to empower students. For example, I am currently writing this essay in Microsoft Word, but when Microsoft Word came out some thought that it would make us bad at grammar, hence it did everything for us, i.e., we would stop thinking ourselves. But we haven’t as the English professor Selber, also correctly argued to Insider “Selber told Insider he’s” no more worried” about ChatGPT than any other development in the history of literary technologies.” You can go back a couple decades and find similar alarm over Word, Wikipedia, and the Internet in general,””[5].

So, in conclusion, even though some think AI will revolutionize or destroy the education system, history and normal reason suggests otherwise. Just as some thought, tools such as Microsoft Word, or even the internet, would wreck the education system. It would probably be like other technologies and become integrated as part of our education. We just must adapt a little, as we would do with any other technology.

Word count, without word count included: 973 words.

[1] “The dawn of AI has come, and its implications for education couldn’t be more significant” (ll. 51-53)

[2] “Cheating on your college essay with ChatGPT won’t get you good grades, say professors — but AI could make education fairer” (ll. 17-19)

[3] “ChatGPT software highlights advances, limitations of modern artificial intelligence” (1:15-1:19)

[4] “The dawn of AI has come, and its implications for education couldn’t be more significant” (ll. 8-11)

[5] “Cheating on your college essay with ChatGPT won’t get you good grades, say professors — but AI could make education fairer” (ll. 21-23)