In-Class Use of AI What Teachers Told Me About A.I. in School (Jessica Gross, NYTimes, 2024):
Leila Wheless, a North Carolina teacher who has been an educator since 1991, tried to keep “an open heart” about using artificial intelligence in her middle school English and language arts classroom. She reviewed the guidance of her state’s generative A.I. “recommendations and considerations” for public schools. But the results of her students’ A.I. use were dispiriting. [...]
The biggest issue isn’t just that students might use it to cheat — students have been trying to cheat forever — or that they might wind up with absurdly wrong answers, like confusing Moses with Mr. Clean. The thornier problem is that when students rely on a generative A.I. tool like ChatGPT to outsource brainstorming and writing, they may be losing the ability to think critically and to overcome frustration with tasks that don’t come easily to them.
An interesting aspect of College Admissions is that both sides are using AI– applicants and admissions offices. As in the other use of AI in K-12 classrooms, or potentially with job application resumes, we risk a flattening of creativity. In addition, there is an increase in AI evaluating the output of AI, potentially leading to some form of “collapse” or “self-reinforcement loop”. As highlighted by Gemini, the risks include degradation of quality, reinforcement of biases, and loss of originality.
Is AI Affecting College Admissions? (Claybourn, US News, 2023):
Fifty percent of higher education admissions offices are using AI, according to a September 2023 survey by Intelligent, an online magazine focused on higher education. That number is expected to rise to more than 80% in 2024, according to the survey, which polled nearly 400 education professionals in both K-12 and higher education.
Incorporating AI into the Admissions Process (Boyd, Volt, 2024):
“As AI’s role in admissions evolves, its applications will likely expand beyond chatbots and predictive analytics to include more sophisticated analysis of essays and personal statements,” Johnson said.
[...]
Johnson also stressed that, although AI can streamline the admissions process, it lacks the human capacity to appreciate the depth of personal essays fully, potentially overlooking the unique, intangible qualities that make applicants stand out.
“This limitation underscores the importance of maintaining human oversight in the review process,” he said. “AI is only as just as the equitable decisions that inform its design.”
1 in 3 College Applicants Used AI for Essay Help. Did They Cheat? (Klein, Education Week, 2024):
About half of those students—or roughly one in six students overall—used AI the way Makena did, to brainstorm essay topics or polish their spelling and grammar. And about 6 percent of students overall—including some of Makena’s classmates, she said—relied on AI to write the final drafts of their essays instead of doing most of the writing themselves.
Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of students admitted to Harvard University’s class of 2027 paid a private admissions consultant for help with their applications.
The use of outside help, in other words, is rampant in college admissions, opening up a host of questions about ethics, norms, and equal opportunity.
Top among them: Which—if any—of these students cheated in the admissions process?
For now, the answer is murky.