Ethan Kranert – Mustangs Ahead

(LAKEWOOD RANCH, FL) – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more prominent in society, and that raises questions of how it will impact education.

AI is becoming a global phenomenon, particularly in schools. As more students use these services, some teachers are becoming concerned.

LRHS English teacher Jennifer Grant said, “I have had several essays turned in that were flagged as being written using AI at over 50% and some as high as 98%.”

Grant also stresses that “students need to understand that writing essays with AI is no different from plagiarizing. In the classroom, we are looking for students’ ideas and mastery of skills. Using a program to write for them does not show their mastery.”

However, Grant said that she thinks it could be used in a beneficial way.

“It could potentially be used as a tool to create a very basic outline of an essay or response and then each student would be responsible for incorporating his or her own voice,” she said.

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Other teachers, like LRHS engineering teacher Bryan Richards, said that they have found potential in the service to be used as a tool.

“AI has many uses and can be done in many ways. There are many ways that AI is useful, there are many applications that people use. It is mostly robotics, and not as much in Engineering,” Richards said.

LRHS Information Technology (IT) field technician George Donnelly maintains the school’s technology.  He’s caught in the middle of the AI discussion. 

“Unfortunately, like other technology, there will be great uses for it and terrible uses for it,” he said.  “We see on a daily basis how the World Wide Web is used in this manner.  One thing I can think of is how it should improve a consumer’s interaction with self-serve kiosks.  When ordering food, for example, it might make suggestions about pairing food items together for a more enjoyable eating experience.”

Overall, AI’s impact on education is uncertain, but probably inevitable.