RAHS students and staff have many different opinions on what they think of Artificial Intelligence, more commonly known as AI. There tended to be a theme throughout the school, however- people either really supported it, or really didn’t.
Sophomore Ellie Lande said “I don’t really use AI, but I think it’s gonna take over the world. It’s horrible; people don’t do as much stuff on their own and don’t have as many critical thinking skills. All it’s doing is just taking information that you could just look up on your own.”
Junior Kennedy Gangl has a different point of view. She said, “[AI] is great, I really love it; it plans my workouts, my meal preps, and can help me with homework. If you use it right, it’s really useful for anything.”
AI is often thought of as just a tool used to cheat at school, but it can be so much more than that if one uses it correctly. School counselor Mr. Stern said, “if we don’t genuinely teach people how and why and when to use it, they won’t be able to use it smartly or in ways that will be able to help them.”
Senior Peter Linaberry said “I feel like it’s pretty overhyped, because in essence, it’s just a slightly more advanced google search, and we’ve had that for the last 20 years.” It’s nothing that’s too revolutionary, it’s just an online source that caters to our thinking.
AI doesn’t have to be used to cheat when it’s used in a school setting. Linaberry uses it to help him with advanced math problems. He’s taking a college calculus course, and said, “if I’m trying to do a math problem I need a step by step breakdown of, that’s very helpful.” He knows that it can be wrong sometimes, saying, “it’s not very accurate. I’ll put stuff in and it only gets the first steps right, and then it’ll start screwing stuff up. It’s enough to help me get started though, and solve it from there.”
Linaberry thinks AI can bring good things to the academic community, and said, “it’ll be interesting to see what kind of challenging things we can take on at earlier stages of development, because we have the tools to help us understand things better. But as far as the creative aspect, we don’t need to be exploring that further. Who wants AI music, writing, or art? What are you going to do, go to a concert performed by a computer?”
Junior Vesper Woodward said, “It can be an extremely helpful learning tool for some people. Checking grammar and spelling is so good. However, I don’t like how some people use it to cheat in school and then talk about it.”
Although none of the people interviewed for this article admitted to using AI to cheat in school this is another issue that high schools have with the introduction of AI to society. Stern compared the use of AI to the use of smartphones saying, “Phones can do so much, but if we don’t use them correctly, they don’t help us at all.”
