As artificial intelligence advances, there is a debate about whether it will be a benefit or an enemy to education.
Dr. Maggie Herb is a professor in the English department and does not approve of the use of AI in the classroom. On the contrary, Dr. Jie Zhang, a professor in the Department of Sociology, believes that AI is a tool that should be used by both students and professors.
Last year, Herb had his first experience with AI within his professional and academic community. People in her community had talked about this a lot, and everyone's thoughts, including Herb's, were concerning, but she didn't panic.
“I think my first reaction was to take a step back and think about it a little bit more, rather than jumping to wild conclusions,” Herb said.
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Recently, the ease with which AI can generate material has caused concern for authors and writers. Herb understands this concern, but writing is something he feels can only come from a human mind, not an AI.
“I think of writing as a fundamentally human activity. I think it’s part of who we are – writing stories, telling stories is part of what makes us human. “I think there are certainly some worrying implications,” she said. “But at the same time, I think there are many things that we humans can't do that machines can't do.”
Herb does not encourage students to use AI in their assignments. Assignments focus on students' perspectives and their own thinking. Herb feels this cannot be achieved with his ChatGPT, an online AI generator that provides writing prompts and detailed responses.
Meanwhile, Zhang not only recognizes the benefits of AI, but also encourages students to use it in their term papers.
“Many professors were worried about it because students can use ChatGPT to write term papers and deceive professors, but my argument is different from other professors,” Zhang said. Ta. “I think this is a new technology and we should take advantage of it.”
Zhang said that while students can use AI, they must check the paper and ensure it is done correctly by indicating on the title page that AI was used, and that students cannot copy and paste from ChatGPT. I mentioned that I used AI as a prompt, not just a paste.
Buffalo State University's academic misconduct policy classifies the use of AI as “cheating” and “plagiarism,” but Zhang took a different approach to the issue.
“I encourage my students that this is not plagiarism,” Zhang said.
Zhang believes that as long as professors and students learn how to use AI as a tool, there is no need to worry about how AI will affect writers and the future of education.
“College education will always be necessary, and AI can't replace it,” Zhang said. “As a professor, as long as I control the technology of the AI, the AI cannot control me. Instead of the AI empowering us, we need to empower the AI. We should leverage AI and become masters of it, rather than letting it control us.”
