Accepting AI: Schools should embrace Chat GPT to enhance class and prepare students for careers in computer science

New tech just dropped! It can craft haikus, drop relationship advice and explain quantum mechanics in terms a 5-year-old would understand. Oh, and it’s free.

But for students? Hands off.

Chat GPT — Open AI’s new software and teachers’ worst nightmare — is already being used in offices to compile research and email clients. To prevent cheating, schools across the country are banning the chatbot from devices and WiFi networks, according to the New York Times. At East, it’s already blocked. 

So the entire workforce gets to “cheat” — but not us.

The point of high school is to prepare us for our future. If that future looks like employing Chat GPT to research data or advertise a product on social media, then let’s attack it the right way, making our relationship with artificial intelligence symbiotic — not dependent. By utilizing this software and emphasizing computer science in school, we can prepare for an inevitable tech-advanced society.

AI is rising in value and effectiveness in our personal and work lives. With programs that can generate unique art or write entire Hallmark movie scripts, it’s unavoidable. You can’t expect people to restrain themselves from using software that cuts to-do lists in half. 

That’s why we should embrace new innovations — not assume they’ll only have negative implications. Instead of banning Chat GPT in academics for fear of cheating, let’s train students to be technicians with the necessary skills for future careers. Exploring the inner workings of AI and actively using it in class will prepare us for the rising demand in computer science jobs and knowledge of technology as a work tool.

From 2021 to 2031, employment in jobs related to computer and information technology is expected to increase 14.6%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Since programs like Chat GPT will replace jobs and heighten the need for tech professionals, students should learn more about building, coding and programming computers in school. Maybe then we’d appreciate our MacBooks as more than devices to click “submit” on Canvas.

Aside from adding more computer science-based classes, we can utilize AI by incorporating it into classrooms to plan lessons more efficiently like any other tool. Calculators and Google Docs don’t erase our ability to add fractions and handwrite — they just expedite the smaller tasks so we can derive multivariable equations and craft thoughtful stories. 

For Chat GPT, this could look like using a chatbot-generated writing prompt to stimulate ideas for a creative story or forming personalized vocabulary lists. It can help teachers too, allowing them to devise lesson plans, rubrics and even letters of recommendation within seconds — saving time for more activity-based lessons.

That’s the beauty of new tech — it advances our learning. Students can use Chat GPT to generate lessons that cater to their learning style and reading level, freeing up time for interactive practice after a quick read of the online chatbot. For example, we could type in “explain artificial intelligence to a visual learner, using language a ninth grader could understand” and spend the rest of class testing software like Chat GPT.

Besides, banning the software won’t prevent students from accessing it through personal laptops and phones. Programs that detect AI-generated writing will also fall short when students learn to tweak a few words and dumb down their chatbot-written essays — teaching them only to be sneakier cheaters.

Instead, cheating should inspire a revamp of learning methods. Teachers could require students to submit the creative process behind their essay or assignment — such as early drafts or Google Docs document history indicating their changes.

As brainstorming and outlining promote creativity and individuality that a robot can’t fake, this approach will both prove academic integrity and emphasize drafting and organizing ideas. This process is more critical to learning than the final copy of an essay — a chatbot could generate that in seconds anyway.

By redirecting the software to streamline creative projects and a deeper understanding of technology, we can raise future coders and web developers — not master cheaters. Chat GPT is not the end of learning, and it’s not going to make us mind-numb zombies who can’t do anything ourselves — as long as we stop running away from technology and start collaborating with it.