Whether you are constantly straining yourself with your homework and assignments or you simply don’t want to do them, a new temptation afforded by huge gains in technology this year has been proving irresistible to many students: have ChatGPT do it all for you.

Artificial Intelligence is a new program that enables you to get answers to nearly anything. The problem with AI is that students are using this answer generator to get their homework, school assignments, and tests done.

Some students are abusing the power of AI by having it do all of their assignments rather than doing it themselves.

“Two of my friends tried it the other day together while they were doing homework and they asked the AI to write a paragraph about something the question was asking them and it gave them a full response and they used it on their assignment,” sophomore #1 said.

“They just copied, pasted it onto the work, and it was done. Again, I didn’t test it out yet but my friends never got caught,” sophomore #1 said. ”They got credit for the assignment and the teacher didn’t see anything suspicious or comment on the paragraph so I would say that using AI is kind of beneficial in my friend’s case.”

“I use AI in every academic thing possible,” freshman #2 said. “I do this because I dislike school, so the less work the better for me.”

“I have used an AI generator called ‘Genie.’ I’ve used it for my math classes, ELA class, and science class,” freshman #2 said. “After using AI, all I have to do is write it down. I even used AI for my whole history midterm. I use AI on both my phones and a couple websites. Even if the websites are blocked I have tricks to get AI working again. I do not think using AI in essays is crossing the line because assignments can be extremely boring.”

None of the students interviewed have been caught.

Despite individual circumstances like these going undetected, school administrators are aware in general of the growing concern around using AI as a form of cheating or plagiarism.

“Sometimes students don’t want to do all the work, whether it’s because it’s easier or because they don’t want to give it their all,” vice principal Stanley Chamblain said.

“I definitely think Covid played a factor,” Chamblain said. “Just putting myself in the position that y’all were in, I would have struggled because I succeeded through the interaction with my teacher. I need to have that face-to-face interaction.”

“But the other factor I think as to why students may lean towards using AI software to cheat,” Chamblain added, “is just the fear of applying themselves or the fear of wanting to try harder or to try to be successful.”

In our research, we also found some students that were using AI responsibly, either to help with studying or homework. 

“I use AI at home to help me receive more knowledge on topics which help me study for tests at home,” freshman #1 said. “I have never cheated on a school test with AI, but I have used AI in the past for homework.” 

“Although I have used AI for homework, because there was too much homework, I still had an idea of how to do the work efficiently,” freshman #1 said.

The future of education will change inevitably because of AI coming into play. Teachers will have to be more aware of students cheating and how they can prevent it. So either AI will be incorporated into our education, or teachers will have to recognize how to spot it.

“I think that will be the case because that’s the case with misinformation on the internet and teachers are teaching how to detect misinformation,” English teacher Mark Lent said. “I think teachers will eventually learn how to detect the style of ChatGPT. It will be hard for AI to mimic individual writing styles so I think that’s where we’ll be able to figure it out…maybe.”