Let’s face it, schoolwork isn’t always the most exciting part of a teen’s life. It’s no surprise that many teens turn to AI for some academic help. The details of how ChatGPT has been used by students is a bit more nuanced. Pew’s study found that 54% of teens were okay with using AI chatbots to do tasks like research new topics. It is hard to say this is an attempt to cheat. This approval drops to just 29% when teens use ChatGPT for math problems. Only 18% of teens find it acceptable to have ChatGPT write essays for them. ChatGPT is likely to be most popular among the many options because of its popularity. Even if respondents were honest about using ChatGPT, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t used other apps like Gemini, Claude or Perplexity. The Digital Education Council released an In August, a survey found that 86% of students worldwide use some form of AI.
Academic AI
Students that aren’t simply turning in ChatGPT essays may be actually improving their education in innovative ways. AI can be an excellent educational supplement but not a replacement. Even the best ChatGPT will not replicate the experience you get when you struggle with an idea until it finally clicks. There have been some experiments along these lines, with Arizona State University working with OpenAI on ChatGPT while London’s David Game College runs an AI-taught course as part of the new Sabrewing program.
There is reason to be concerned about students becoming too reliant on AI, and not learning how to think critically and solve issues independently. AI in education, on the other hand can offer students personalized resources that they may not have otherwise. This is the more difficult but most likely best solution, since even the strictest policy will not stop students from using AI. To prevent this, you’d have to replace all homework with oral presentations or require all research be done on paper.
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Eric Hal Schwartz has been a freelance writer at TechRadar for more than 15 years. He has covered the intersection of technology and the world. He was the head writer of Voicebot.ai for five years and was at the forefront of reporting on large language models and generative AI. Since then, he has become an expert in the products of generative AI, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. He also knows Google Gemini and all other synthetic media tools. His experience spans print, digital and broadcast media as well as live events. He’s now continuing to tell stories that people want to hear and need to know about the rapidly changing AI space and the impact it has on their lives. Eric is based out of New York City.
