AI has its positives

When you think of Artificial Intelligence (AI), you may immediately think of negative uses like cheating and plagiarizing. However AI can be used for good things, from checking grammar all the way up to writing stories or producing art.
“AI has been around since the early 2000s. It’s been a part of natural language processing and AI can been super beneficial for looking at speech habits,” said Milton IT Manager Mr. Andrew McNeal. He added that AI can also help students that don’t speak English as a first language.
Milton Director of Secondary Education Mr. Andrew Rantz said he was against AI for years, describing it as “disingenuous” and “not authentic.” Mr. Rantz added that he has started to use it, and even though he doesn’t agree with how most students use it, he realizes that it is a great resource for some things.
Mr. Rantz said that AI is a great tool for doing simple tasks such as making outlines, starting projects, and making schedules and timelines, along with more time consuming tasks.
Mr. Rantz added that a lot of students use AI to do their work, which is very different from using it to outline a research paper and providing a starting point.
AI is a great tool if it’s used to assist in starting, but you don’t have to go through and struggle and persevere through writing that paper. Along with learning what it takes to do the research and formulating your own opinion then an opportunity for learning is lost said Mr. Rantz.
“Some teachers use AI to help create assignments and run essays to see grammatical errors and things like that, to help speed some processes,” Mr. Rantz continued. “Teachers could use different AI programs to generate assignments and learning pathways for students at different levels in their class and to personalize assignments for certain students.”
“In college, I’ve had professors use different programs to write out their exams so that the wording is better than what they would have written themselves,” Mr. McNeal said.
However he cautioned against relying on AI. “I think nothing substitutes critical thinking skills.” AI can be used as a tool for putting work into different perspectives, generating different examples, assisting in general knowledge formation, grammatical mistakes, writing techniques and benefits of proofreading, Mr. McNeal added.
According to Mr. Rantz, there are still discussions with teachers about students using AI. The school can’t figure out a foolproof way for students to use AI, so it is largely prohibited because of the potential for cheating, he explained.
Mr. Rantz said AI can assist in an administrative role with “writing grants and accounting, payroll and different human resource things.” (It can also help run an organization by helping with documents and organization.)
Mr. McNeal said that he thinks if there were fewer restrictions on AI use, then some students would use it in negative ways; however, many are more likely to use it positively, such to organize ideas or summary information.
Mr. McNeal added that AI will continue to evolve and change, and that it’s going to surpass current technology like how a calculator once took the place of the slide rule.