How educators can help students ethically use AI to hone their writing

While teachers must make sure students do not fall victim to becoming passive users of this technology, they have opportunities to help them be creative and explore topics deeper than ever before. This takes purposeful and deliberative instruction. It may also provide more opportunities for educators to institute interdisciplinary teaching.

Just like good athletes need to push their limits in order to grow stronger and faster, the human brain must be challenged. Over-reliance on artificial intelligence can result in students not pushing their intellectual capacity. In other words, they need to stretch their thinking and creativity muscles, to be challenged, to learn to persist through difficult problems. Human judgment, intuition and creativity cannot be replaced.

Technology costs significant financial resources and can lead to further inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. This was clearly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic and will only worsen with AI. Districts must be certain to support those schools which are most likely to feel these inequalities.

All of this new work and focus for educators will require additional training, curricular development work, and enhancement to schools’ technological infrastructure. Administrators must provide time and resources to make this happen.

Student AI use is difficult to identify, and it can easily feed them erroneous information, but it can also therefore spread misinformation causing an algorithmic snowballing effect.

At present, artificial intelligence is the Wild West and is under-regulated. AI companies are led by a profit-motive rather than a student intellectual-motive. This can lead to ethical concerns, data misuse, and data breaches for users.

In the long-term Bozkurt expresses concerns that AI will fall into the trap of self-referential data. In other words, misinformation continues to be repeated in a circular echo-chamber which drives the algorithms. In turn, this potentially leads to dilution of quality, and “may reduce the richness and accuracy of knowledge bases.”

But this leads to yet another concern — new ideas may not receive the light of day. Only those ideas which receive mass appeal or have common acceptance will find their way into the algorithms. New ideas won’t be able to compete, innovation will not get traction, and intellectual growth will therefore be stifled.

For its part, the faculty at Piedmont University are making deliberative efforts to capitalize on the strengths of AI and to address its associated concerns. A group of professors have created a checklist for students to help them determine where using AI for a writing assignment is appropriate.

There are pointed questions for students to consider if their use is ethical, practical, and efficient. They then focus on how it should be used, and how it shouldn’t be used. For example, the checklist includes:

Finally, students are asked, “Can I explain my findings and demonstrate full understanding without the aid of AI, and can I prove what sources I used and how I verified the information?”

More particularly, the College of Education faculty adopted this syllabus language: “The responsible use of generative AI is now critical in education. Therefore, generative AI programs (e.g., ChatGPT) may be employed in certain contexts to enhance learning, such as to help generate ideas during brainstorming and confirming existing analyses of data. Where use of generative AI is expressly permitted in this course, its use must be declared by citation. Students may not submit any work created by an AI program as your own under any circumstances.”

Further: “It should be noted that the material generated by AI programs may be inaccurate, incomplete, or otherwise problematic. Beware that the use of generative AI may also stifle your own independent thinking and creativity. Like any other reference material, due consideration must be given to the quality of the prompt, the material created, and the overall quality of the reference, any of which may be poor.” 

Finally: “Students may not use AI to represent themselves in classroom contexts, such as to compose discussion board entries or responses, compose a draft of an assignment, or participate in online seminars. Any instance where generative AI was used in an unauthorized manner will be treated as an act of academic dishonesty. When in doubt about permitted usage, use citations, and ask the instructor for clarification.”

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. It’s ubiquitous and getting more intrusive by the day. We don’t have the luxury to hope the industry self-regulates. We must own it, take advantage of it, and guide its appropriate use. This will require a concerted and collaborative effort from teachers, parents, and political leaders to step up to their own responsibilities. In this, we have no choice.

Perry Rettig is a distinguished professor and former vice president at Piedmont University. He has spent 42 years as an educator, including stints as a public schoolteacher and principal. This is the second of three columns by Rettig on AI. The final piece will focus on how students can appropriately use AI effectively and to improve their writing.