Opinion: Is AI Helping or Hurting Our Learning

As we begin approaching the end of first semester, a common theme this school year has been the use of artificial intelligence in our classrooms. Students have multiple different reasons for their use of AI tools such as ChatGPT, but at times the lines can become blurred on if the usage is beneficial or not. Although many arguments can be made that AI usage in a school environment benefits students, the truth is that AI is in fact hurting our learning.

“Benefits” of using AI in the classroom

Some of the most common reasons students use AI in the classroom that are considered “benefits” include: essay inspiration, ideas, explaining things in a different way, and creating calendars/study plans. These are typically considered “benefits” because students argue they are only using them as tools to aid their learning, not to cheat or plagiarize their schoolwork. While yes, it is not technically plagiarism or cheating to ask AI tools for inspiration, it can quickly become detrimental to a student’s critical thinking skills, writing style, and overall brain power.

Why these “benefits” are actually harmful in the long run

These so-called benefits become deteriorating to critical thinking skills because when you have a tool that you know can do the work for you, it becomes increasingly difficult to find and use your own thoughts and ideas. It becomes especially harmful when these AI tools are used to write things for you. Relying both completely or slightly on AI to create material used in your personal work takes away from your own writing style and techniques, as well as deforming your critical thinking skills and ability to form your own sentences and material. This issue can also be seen in the use of AI to create ideas and inspiration for something like an essay, because again as time goes on your ability to form your own ideas and opinions will become increasingly inadequate. Using AI to create calendars and personal study plans is overall less detrimental to your brain power than the other usages, but still harms your critical thinking skills. It can be helpful to use these tools for inspiration and ideas, but in the long run it is extremely detrimental to your critical thinking skills, your ability to think independently, and your ability to problem solve.

AI’s harmful impact on the environment

AI does not only harm our overall intelligence and independent thinking abilities, it also has an extremely negative impact on our environment. The processing of AI is very intensive and uses a lot of energy. This processing works up a lot of heat in the data centers, which in turn requires a lot of cooling systems for these servers. The issue, however, is that these cooling systems are powered by something extremely necessary to our environment: water. Cooling these data servers requires the evaporation of large amounts of fresh water from the environment. One singular AI data center uses hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water every single day. While this alone is an extremely big issue, to make matters worse a majority of said data centers are located in areas where fresh water is already scarce, multiplying the already ongoing water challenges in these locations.

All in all, AI can seem useful at times, but the temporary aid is not worth the long term negative impacts it can have on both you as a person and the environment. AI is detrimental to an individual’s critical thinking skills, problem solving abilities, independent tendencies, and overall intelligence. The so-called benefits that most individuals think of when using AI seem helpful, but deep down AI is a lot more harmful than it is helpful.