Between the growing popularity of the ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion softwares, it’s no secret that AI has quickly become mainstream. AI is everywhere, especially the classroom where the prospect of having your homework done for you by AI seems almost too good to be true. 

While AI’s results are not always perfect, their ideas, quickly generated by a predictive prompt-to-text algorithm, serve as a beneficial tool for brainstorming and research. 

With every beneficial use of AI comes its antithesis. ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion’s ability to conjure up intellectual work in a fraction of the time it would take a human is a prospect that is enticing for even the most dedicated students to slack off. While tools for detecting AI generated pieces of text are emerging, the popular plagiarism detection software, Turnitin, won’t catch this kind of cheating sending educators into a panic.

Some teachers have high hopes for tools such as GPTZero, a program built by a Princeton student that claims to be able to detect AI-generated writing. But these tools aren’t reliably accurate, and it’s relatively easy to fool them by changing a few words, or using a different AI program to paraphrase certain passages. 

Even if it were technically possible to block ChatGPT, having teachers spend their nights and weekends keeping up with the latest AI detection software steers the learning course farther off track than if classrooms learned to adapt to working with AI

The barricade has fallen. Tools like ChatGPT aren’t going anywhere; they’re only going to improve. Barring some major regulatory intervention, this particular form of machine intelligence is now a fixture of our society which is, perhaps, the biggest reason not to eliminate AI from classrooms. 

Because today’s students will graduate into a world full of generative AI programs, they’ll need to know their way around these tools — their strengths, weaknesses, hallmarks and blind spots — in order to work alongside them. For teachers, it’s important to instruct students on how they’ll need hands-on experience in order to understand specific types of AI work, what types of bias it contains and how it can be misused and weaponized. Sudden technological shifts are rarely easy, but establishing a fine line between what AI is meant for and how it can be abused sets students and teachers on the fast track to seeing AI as a help over a hindrance.