Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic right now. The creator of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, just had a hearing with Congress in May this year and Congress asked some scary questions, implicating that there may be some even scarier answers. Of course, it’s the job of the government to try to get ahead of things like this because the security of our citizens is always at stake with something so voluminous. To the average citizen, however, the ones represented by said Congress, A.I. is trivial at best. Its existence brings both wonder and fear. Classic Sci-Fi movies have driven the collective imagination to a point of near paranoia, with images of robots turning on the human race and taking over. The reality, however, is that the release of ChatGPT, and many see this Large Language Model as being a major development in the field of AI, is both ominous yet also, and, please allow for this dramatic pause, may truly be an opportunity for optimism. If anyone were to attempt to list all of the potential applications that AI could have, that document would be almost infinite, let alone too long to publish. But, for this publication, for this dear community of hard-working folks mainly just wanting to know, and pardon any assumptions here, how will this, among all the other changes in the world, change the day-to-day? Perhaps even more succinctly, how will AI affect the lives of our young people, who are just barely stepping into adulthood and facing a world filled with rapidly changing, life-altering technology?
Of course, educators may see an opportunity here, despite the negatives staring them in the face. One application of AI hotly discussed in education is how so many students use it to write papers, i.e. how to cheat and not do their work. The classic 5-paragraph essay on just about any topic can, after all, be produced in seconds by Chat GPT. When students discover this power before the parents or the teachers, grades will no doubt improve, but of course, not without some scrutiny. Yet, when these important issues of academic integrity are addressed and the nature of the writing assignments are changed, and not just for English classes, but for any teacher who wants a student to summarize their knowledge in writing, ChatGPT remains an intriguing tool, despite this potential use of its power NOT for good.
