Winning Essay by Moksha Prasad

AI is an abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence, as suggested by the name it isn’t meant to substitute human intelligence and isn’t true intelligence itself. However, its instant craze in a world where education appreciation has decreased, while student stress has increased provides an avenue for AI to make the education system fall apart. Students have been found, in research conducted by the Yale Child Study Center, to think highly negatively about school, most associating it as a location that harbors negative feelings. This report finds this to be a self-description that nearly 75% of the 21,678 high schoolers surveyed in the U.S share. The most common emotion they used to do such? Tired. Students, myself included, tend to find the work we do tedious. Who’s going to need to remember the 29th president of the U.S.A at a ‘desk’ job or commercial post. Who’s going to care about the central idea of ‘The Little Prince’ when our future is still full of bills to pay.

Fewer people seem to care about college anymore and those that do seem to be trapped in the aggressively competitive, college acceptance race; there are perhaps thousands of YouTube channels, coaching centers, and millions of dollars being spent just to get into colleges. There are kids at the age of 9 concerned about higher education! All that stress, that competitiveness, just for higher education! Most people tend to forget colleges are businesses themselves, and most of the famous ones, the Ivies, were created for athlete promotion. But all of this craze over colleges, doing well in education, getting over education and finally earning a position in society seems to be the top of several students problems. It’s even predicted by Research.com that, “34% of teens expected to be more stressed in the next school year”.

With all this tension between the distinct paths a student could take, yet all nerve-wrecking all the same, when a tool appears in the middle of this peak mental crisis, like a miracle, wouldn’t you use it? It’s like when Achilles is granted his unstoppable powers by dipping into the River Styx. What is the worst thing that can happen! If anything, the benefits outweigh the possible cons, being able to get instant answers or advice, all around the internet with just a click! The hidden fact is, AI has been around for decades. Its recent widespread appearance is only due to the most recent technological advancements that make the tool more appealing to its currently STEM emphasis society, and technologically rich audience. We’re losing our humanity, we want instant knowledge, instant effects, but we’re losing those particular humane lessons such as patience, emotion-seeking, reasoning, abstract thought processes about the surrounding environment, and an imagination that isn’t centered around facts.

AI is speeding that process especially amongst the coming forward generations. As mentioned before, the intelligence services provided by AI isn’t from the AI program itself, it is simply a circulation of already existing ideas proposed from the internet. This is already suggesting bias without even delving into how many answers are being provided by a certain background, what variety of sources are being used, and the number of individual stereotypes an author has that may have been transcribed into writing and applied onto users of AI. Especially younger and developing individuals: students. Students may be impacted, while not understanding their answers are opinions or simply inaccurate, they may start expressing these biases and stereotypes under the impression that they’re facts. Students won’t be able to bring their own ideas to topics, help bring in more knowledge, one of the main purposes of school. Is it really worth hurting our student’s knowledge, their understanding of topics? Just like Achilles belief that his greatest strength was his powers from the River Styx, that created his biggest weakness, the Achilles’ Heel.

Imagine the River Styx as AI here granting the user, or anyone that dips into the River Styx, the ability to use its power to gain answers, in detail searches, or create pieces of art with just a few clicks. This is ultimately what could make or break any assignment, but similarly to the myth where if any ordinary mortal in the Greek myth enters the River Styx, many students will be more likely to be hurt by AI usage for assignments if they let it consume their academic work. Like the few demigods, such as Achilles, some users might be able to take advantage of AI for support instead, until AI starts giving negative or inaccurate responses; commonly forgotten is AI’s human creation, meaning like humans it will make mistakes. AI might seem like the tool that could promote academia but we will still need the human touch, the human knowledge in our students that AI simply can’t engage.