2025 marks the third year of generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms being open to the public, and in these past years AI has grown from its humble beginnings, both in popularity and in development.
Depending on how you view it, it feels though we haven’t had this software for long, yet it seems to have been long enough to become a staple in society.
According to studies from NPR and AIPRM, around half of the US population is using AI. This varies from daily to weekly use, but either way, it has become a tool that many have utilized.
AI has been used to generate music, art, computer programs, and most importantly—in a school setting—text. A majority of the time, these people are students. Students everywhere are busy, so using AI seems like a problem solver for the average overwhelmed highschooler.
School boards have held meetings to debate whether they should put a stop to AI usage in schools, or to utilize it for teaching.
According to Baltimore City School’s most recent Procedures for Grading and Reporting, if a student misuses AI for schoolwork in a way that’s not allowed, it counts as cheating.
It is up to the teachers, in each class, to explain what’s okay and what’s not when it comes to AI usage depending on what they think.
But, according to recent public meetings over Zoom and online poll results, the majority of teachers find it harmful for students to use AI for their learning experience.
Whether schools have already gone full lockdown on AI usage, or some attempt to utilize it to their advantage, it’s not just a debate about cheating, it’s a debate about the future of AI in society.
If students ask AI to write an essay and just turn it in, they are skipping the process of learning, thinking critically, and improving their writing skills.
This is the most common thought with worried parents and teachers alike, thinking that students will use forms of AI to cheat—not learn—and completely undermine the whole education system.
However, if a student uses AI to refine their ideas to get past a possible writer’s block, is that still the wrong thing to do?
In some places, teachers are letting their students use AI for small edits, and some are allowing it for only specific assignments, but as of right now, with not much to test the use of AI besides faulty text checkers, there is no way to regulate it properly.
Another big problem that comes with AI is its accessibility to everybody. ChatGPT is one of the largest easily accessible AI softwares that has not only become one of the top downloaded apps in the Apple Appstore for “productivity,” but it is also completely free.
Easily accessible AI has become more common with most large corporations, resulting in these corporations purchasing the “AI chip” used for AI softwares from companies like the NVIDIA Corporation and the Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. These AI chips let companies incorporate the AI interface into their systems.
Most search engines now contain AI assistant software, each with a new silly name that they plaster on to differentiate from the others, but they all do the same thing: pull from sources across the web, jumble it together and summarize it for the reader when they search something.
Some examples of this would be Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, Canva’s Ask Canva, Murph, or X’s Grok.
This can be helpful in some ways when requiring simple information, but can also give you incorrect or out of context information at first search due to there being no fact checking algorithm.
An AI program can’t tell the difference between a factual news article and a Reddit post from twelve years ago.
AI, as a surprising amount of people don’t know, is highly destructive to our environment. The metals used lead to soil erosion and pollution, and it also increases carbon emissions, creating strains on water systems.
There is a lot more to be said about the accessibility of AI, making it easier than ever to use services like ChatGPT, and there is a lot more to be said about the sheer impact it could—and has already made—on our planet.
Whether or not AI has a place in our society, our lives, and our education, the future of this technology looks to be a stone still unturned.
One thing is for certain: the reality is AI doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, and no matter if it is accepted or turned away, people will continue to find ways to use it.
To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.
Featured photo by OpenAI.
