AI has become the biggest topic in technology over the past few years. ChatGPT first launched in 2022, and after its widespread popularity, many other companies followed suit in the AI craze. Google launched Gemini, Apple will soon release its AI for the public, and many other AIs including Character.ai, DALL-E, MIdjourney, and more. However, as something rises in popularity, its flaws become more apparent. We must keep this in mind if we choose to use AI. So the question becomes, how do we use AI correctly?
The journey starts with intent, just like most things we use. AI is a tool and when using tools, you don’t use a single one to do a whole job, like using just a hammer and nails to build a house. You could do this, but it would be inefficient and would yield something of poor quality. Failure is inevitable if you leave the entire construction to a single person. Depending on their job, they might succeed in certain areas.
A plumber would get the piping correct, an electrician would get the wires fixed and a contractor would get the legal documents figured out, but the flaws of each would be too vast to make it worth it. AI is very similar to this. Telling ChatGPT to write an entire essay for you and then submitting it is full of flaws. ChatGPT may get some aspects of the essay correct but will be weak due to how the model works.
ChatGPT, and all other AIs, pull information from the internet. The internet is already unreliable, but combining that with an AI that can easily mess up its information can be deadly to one’s grade. AIs are also very verbose, meaning they use very lengthy and unnecessary words. This makes AI writing very easy to spot, especially for teachers.
On top of that, they are not approved by the educational board, and using AI like this doesn’t help you learn. So how can we use AI correctly to accelerate our learning? The top priority when using AI in writing is ensuring that it isn’t writing for you.
If you ask your teacher for help on an essay, they will give you tips and suggestions on how to improve your techniques. The teacher won’t write your essay for you. AI takes a different approach. If you are struggling with a prompt, you can ask ChatGPT for some ideas for what to write about, not to write it for you. In this scenario, it’s still you writing your work, not ChatGPT, this helps you see how to write from different angles and prevents academic misconduct. Another way to use AI in your writing is spell check.
One of the worst parts of the English language is its grammar rules, and while these skills are necessary to grow, you can get help in noticing and fixing them. Google Docs already does this to some degree, but programs like Grammarly help elevate this a little more. Grammarly helps with spelling, grammar, punctuation, and more. Grammarly never directly writes essays for you, it only helps you notice mistakes and tells you how to fix them. In other words, Grammarly is essentially filling in the teacher role for students.
AI is not going anywhere. In a lot of ways, the rise of AI is just like when computers were just on the rise. Panic ensued when the education system saw computers as something only used to cheat. As we now walk to class, we are surrounded by technology. Computers are heavily used tools. And just like AI, if computers are misused, they too become much worse for us. AI will adjust and adapt over time, a few years ago, it struggled to form coherent sentences, but now, it is capable of much more. Something that can remain constant though, is how to properly use it.
