Dillon Bemis
Professor Montoya
English 101
13 January 2025
IS AI MAKING US
STUDENTS SMARTER
OR LAZIER?
You have 5 minutes until your 5-page paper is due and you haven't even gathered your sources, what are you going to do? I know! Use AI it's an easy-to-use free tool and it will do a good enough writing that paper in minutes. Not too long ago this conversation didn't exist, if you were late, you would suffer the consequences to your actions and must prepare better for next time. But now it's so easy to rely so heavily on AI, and once you rely on AI that one time it's so easy to let it take over and use it again and again.
AI is making its way into our everyday lives more and more. Features like meta-AI on Instagram or googles AI overview integrated into the system. These things cannot be escaped these big companies keep pushing them into everything we do. While AI is very useful it can also make us very lazy, so which one is it?
Even though Artificial intelligence gets a reputations use of AI isn't all wrong and can be a useful especially for us students. A very powerful use of AI is using it for recourses, more specifically, languages. it can gather information from across the web and piece it together very fast to give us exactly what we are looking for, translating less spoken languages or gathering information about less followed Cultures which otherwise would've taken hours maybe days to find research on if you can even find accurate sources, but with AI it is a lot faster and accurate. And of course, humans are the ones that gather all this information and translated these languages beforehand, but AI can help direct us and bridge the gap for us students learning.
AI can also help with time management and productivity; two things' students often struggle with. AI can help with repetitive tasks like sorting notes, organizing study schedules, and managing upcoming deadlines. Resources like ChatGPT and Google Assistant can help write outlines, and even brainstorm ideas. Now some people are against using AI to take away the creative part of writing, but others see it as a useful tool.
AI can help with problem-solving. Whether it is solving a math problem or finding errors in a paper. AI can find errors and solve problems faster than we ever could, maybe even find stuff we might miss. This can be dangerous if exploited, or it can be turned into a personal study buddy.
Now on the flip side, as tools like ChatGPT become more intergraded in our everyday system students can find it very tempting to lean into, especially when due dates and assignments are piling up. At first, using AI to write a paper for you can feel like a one-time thing in a time of need. But for most, it will start a bad habit and dependency of using AI every time. In the long term this can affect a student's intellectual growth, academic integrity, and overall skill development.
AI isn't inherently bad, but how we use it can be. Jess Elmquist in a Forbes article, puts it well: “We want AI to do the right things and all on its own so we can do other, more pleasant things. But we still need sharp, empowered people in the loop to ensure accuracy and efficiency.” although Elmquist was referring to the workplace, the same principle applies to students. Students must remain active consumers in their academic journey. Not passive and robot generated content reliant. It is the school, the teacher, and the student's responsibility to enforce AI not as a crutch, but as a tool, to help learn and grow.
There are also some ethical questions. Whether AI is considered “cheating” or not, in this ongoing day and age of constant AI. At the bottom line there is this, if a student turns in homework that they did not do and therefore did not learn from or understand, it defeats the whole purpose of learning. Imagine a student forcing another to do their homework, most would agree that is unethical. Having AI do your school is the same, regardless of how it feels or how common it has become. It removes the student from the learning process.
Talk about loss of general problem-solving skills. One of the biggest concerns with the use of AI is losing problem-solving skills. Throughout all your schooling years whether kindergarten, or a graduating collage student, problem-solving is always taught. Learning how to read something, figure out the problem, and then solve it. Is (in my opinion) one of the most important skills someone can have. When you rely on AI it slowly will take those skills away. And if this keeps up it will leave generations after us without problem-solving skills.
This problem doesn't stay in the classroom. When students graduate, they are expected to get jobs. But when all the time they spent is school wasn't used to learn skills for said job, they are going to run into some issues. In this context using AI as a replacement and not a supplement can be “not cool” to put it mildly. It can be misleading to employers, unfair to people that actually worked to have that skill and end up getting you it some trouble.
So where do we go from this? AI is here to stay, students should be taught not just how to use AI, but when and why. Schools and colleges should draw a clear line between assistance, and substation, and promote ethical use. Encouraging transparency and incorporating AI into the curriculum, and how to use it for process not product. In the end AI is a great tool and can help guide us down our academic path but not walk it for us.
And hey, I will be honest, when I first found out about ChatGPT is sounded like a miracle pill. But after thinking it over, and talking to my parents, a little bit I realized I would never actually learn. If I let him write all my papers solve all my problems, I would never learn the skills they are trying to teach me. So instead, I had ChatGPT help me. I had a class a couple quarters ago and I really struggled to understand the concepts. I don't know if it was how my professor explained them, or if math just isn't my thing. Regardless, I remembered AIs usefulness and put it to work. I would have ChatGPT read the questions and then just spit them out into something I could understand better. This was a way to use AI as a tool to help me without just asking for the answers.
AI is undeniably one of the greatest advancements in technology. It can be extremely useful with helping students learn with creativity and productivity. But like any powerful tool it can be dangerous, and we must be responsible. We must also be very intentional with letting it support our efforts and not replace them. The lines between right and wrong can become easily blurred, especially in a school setting where pressure is high to preform and impress. We must draw clear lines and be open for discussions on the ethics of AI
Ultimately our goal should be to grow a new responsible generation of learners, who are not only skilled with AI but can use it effectively as an extension of their brain. Instead of letting AI do the thinking for us, we use it as a tool to help. Teaching and learning how to collaborate. Combining our creativity and the access to a whole new world with AI we can help empower our generation and generations to come. We set boundaries, foster ethical habits and emphasize the value of authentic learning. Helping AI to enhance learning and education not diminish it.
SOURCES CITED
1. United States Government Accountability Office. Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications. GAO-18-644T, 26 June 2018, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-644t.
2. Hern, Alex. “Don’t Ask What AI Can Do for Us – Ask What It Is Doing to Us.” The Guardian, 19 Apr. 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/19/dont-ask-what-ai-can-do-for-us-ask-what-it-is-doing-to-us-are-chatgpt-and-co-harming-human-intelligence.
3. Rosen, Christine. “Is Smart Technology Making Us Dumb?” Scientific American, 20 Mar. 2018, https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/is-smart-technology-making-us-dumb/.
4. Forbes Human Resources Council. “How to Prevent AI from Eroding Employees’ Critical Thinking Skills.” Forbes, 13 Sept. 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2023/09/13/how-to-prevent-ai-from-eroding-employees-critical-thinking-skills/.
5. World Economic Forum. “Google CEO: AI Will Be More Profound than Electricity or Fire.” World Economic Forum, Jan. 2018, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/01/google-ceo-ai-will-be-bigger-than-electricity-or-fire/.
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