AI :A Friend or Enemy of Students?

It will be a long debate to talk about Ai being a friend or an enemy of students’ learning process. No doubt, it has made the learning far easier. Students just have to poke a question on it. They don’t need to consult google and read different articles to search a specific thing. But the point to ponder is that in the era of AI, one really thinks that students are advancing? There was the era of Newton and Einstein or if we further go back to talk about writing specifically, there was the era of Shakespeare, at that time even there was no Internet, no technology. That was the actual learning from books, from environment. They were not the slaves of technology to do anything.
Surely, now the environment has become competitive, but the question arises‘ Is it the competition of intellectual and hard working people or of who is proficient in technology or who has resources? ʼ. It would not be wrong to say that AI is a friend of students who is spoon-feeding them with slow poison hurtling towards Armegeddon. There will be an era where there would be Einstein or Shakespeare but generated by AI. There will be then humanoid robots all around, replacing humans in almost every domain. Now, AI has crept into education sector and is creating a Goliath-sized threat to the future of education by promoting cheating and plagiarism. Students are using different models generated by AI like different versions of OpenAI or ChatGpt to make their assignments and if it goes like this then in the future their will be a digitalized world of AI with its own curriculum, teachers and strategies which would reject the traditional educational system.
“AI is now beginning to outperform humans in more and more of the skills, including in understanding of human emotions.” (Yuval Noah Harari)
That was the talk of past and future of education in terms of AI. Talking about the present time, some people take AI just as an assistant like Google is, but many discourage its usage especially among students. To clarify, technology is not really that bad, it is the improper usage of it that makes it bad. If used properly AI can enhance and build students’ abilities and skills. Studies have shown that the students who use AI are pretty well in studies as compared to the ones who don’t use it. It means AI makes the students think outside the box. In addition, it is helping students as a personal and unpaid tutor who is available to them 24/7 for solving even minor and silly questions of them. Apart from that, there is a huge benefit of AI that is encouraged by many and can’t be denied that AI is diminishing class, geographic or language discrimination among the students. No matter from where the students are, they are getting knowledge from it, they will be treated in the same and equal manner, and this feasibility given by AI would rise significant questions about the current education system which is starving for money.
Apparently, AI is giving relief to the students in their learning at the same time hitting them on their vertebra. Although, as it is often said, all that glitters is not gold, Julie Hessler was right when she said that AI is an enemy of students. They have now become handicapped to AI. They need a push from AI to start any assignment.
With the continuous usage of AI by students there is a threat that their power skills will be lost. Not only educational system would become mechanised but also students would be left with just a piece of degree and thesis written by AI. Because of AI an incompetent environment would be created in which students would be afraid of using their own skills in competition with the skills of the students who use AI. The future of AI would be destructive if students keep relying on it completely; however, the smart use of AI can save education from extinction. The smart use demands patience by giving time to it and combining technology and human mind to make an amalgam that would outstrip both poles.
Implementation of several reforms can save students from being paralysed and educational sectors from being extinct. First and foremost, teachers should be equipped with skills and knowledge to make the students use the technology of AI effectively. They should fix the tools of AI according to students’ needs and issues. Secondly, in classroom learning, Ai should be taken as an assistant, not as a substitute. It will be enabled by parallelising traditional teaching and technology. The world is continuously evolving, institutions must find their educational goals and adapt them according to Ai tools : restriction of overreliance on AI, passing the work done by students through AI detection tools and making the students understand how to use AI smartly and productively.