In November 2022 OpenAI, an artificial intelligence developer, launched ChatGPT, bringing AI to the masses. Nearly three years later and AI has become unavoidable. From movies to customer service, industries once built on people power are shifting towards technology — and education is no different. 

I’ve watched my classmates feed our assignments into ChatGPT, asking it to “summarize it like I’m four years old.” I’ve witnessed it spit out paragraphs, to then be told to “make it sound less like AI.” 

While I don’t mind the use of AI as a tool, this reliance feels normalized, sometimes encouraged. In April, President Trump signed an executive order focused on integrating AI into education, starting as early as kindergarten. I fear we have crossed the line between craftsmanship and dependency with long term ramifications mounting.

An experiment conducted by MIT measured students’ brain activity while writing an essay. One third of the participants could only rely on themselves with no resources, another group could use support from Google and the rest of the participants were allowed to use ChatGPT. 

They discovered that the group who could access ChatGPT had “less alpha connectivity, which is associated with creativity; and less theta connectivity, which is associated with working memory.” In one round, 81% of the participants who used ChatGPT could not quote from the essay they were tasked to write. 

While some students might use AI to help brainstorm and research, the experiment’s findings show that when given access, students are more likely to use ChatGPT to generate full paragraphs, if not the entire essay. 

What sets AI chatbots apart from just using Google are their ability to “simulate human conversation, adapt to user inputs, and […] provide personalized responses.” The experience feels special because these chatbots can be tailored to every user. From each interaction someone has with ChatGPT, it learns more about their preferences, personalizing its reply in response. 

These chatbots have begun to feel more human than the people writing the articles and conducting the research the AI is trained on. Why Google something when ChatGPT will provide the answer immediately and compliment you just for asking?

Although personable and accessible, ChatGPT is often biased and unreliable. In a study conducted by Purdue University, 52% of the answers it supplied contained incorrect information. Substituting AI for schoolwork not only degrades the ability to critically think, the assignment completed is often erroneous.  

Part of learning is the struggle, I would argue it’s the most important part. Facing difficulty and finding a way to overcome it is a natural piece of academia. But relying on AI relinquishes students of that struggle and thus, of the ability to grow.