Roving Teen Reporter: AI vs Teen I

Since its inception, Chat GPT has been at the forefront of many conversations — from brilliant medical researchers to high school students looking for an easy A on their chemistry homework. While artificial intelligence is not a new concept, other platforms have been largely overshadowed by Chat GPT, whose relevance is apparent in the sheer mass and variety of people who have heard of it. In fact, my tennis students who range from ages 5 to 60 years old have all utilized the strange but magical tool. What makes Chat GPT so terrifyingly powerful is both its accessibility (as its base version remains free) and its simplicity to use. Just type in a few directions, wait a few moments, and you have every bit of knowledge at the tips of your fingers.

The system is almost flawless, providing students not only with answers for their calculus problems but also with explanations of how one could reach that answer. It can be used as an extremely helpful tool not only for academic purposes but also for schedule making and other organizational needs. And many people do utilize Chat GPT in a responsible manner. But others, not so much.

After all, when tested, the program was able to pass every single AP exam other than the AP English Language and Literature exams. So why wouldn’t the average high school student want that kind of study buddy?

Chat GPT has grown to be a high school teacher’s greatest rival – thousands of students use the platform each day to complete their assignments.

However, utilizing Chat GPT does more than just cheat the system and assignments that come with it. More so, Chat GPT cheats adolescents from a true education – one that is stimulated by intellectual curiosity and a love of learning. The overreliance on Chat GPT by high school students uncovers a tremendously gaping hole in our educational system – classes are unengaging, assignments are largely busy work, and no one truly cares about what they are doing. The American public school system has stripped learning of its most precious values and has turned gaining knowledge into such a chore that students rely on a robot to do so instead of their own minds. What are we going to do when these students become our workforce? How is our society going to function with a generation whose knowledge is reliant on artificial intelligence?

Yet, it is very easy to just place the blame on the students who utilize Chat GPT to cheat. But it isn’t just a few students. When such a vast majority of high schoolers have used Chat GPT at one time or another for an assignment, you know there is a glaring problem which no scapegoat can explain.