Is A.I Acceptable in the Learning Environment?
A.I should be regulated in schools all over the world. Recently, in South Korea, thousands of students have been caught using A.I to cheat on tests. This comes as a shock to many people as South Korea is considered to be the home of many prestigious students.
For example, Local news media reported that a professor had found that dozens of students may have cheated by using textbooks, computer programs, or even ChatGPT during an online midterm. Several students at Korea University in Seoul have also admitted to using A.I on an online test last month. Similar phenomenons were seen at other top-tier school in Korea.
It is extremely rare for these top tier schools to experience such mass academic dishonesty. These three universities are the Ivy-league of Korea. Known as SKY (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University), some students lives are built around going to these schools. To get there, students take an 8-hour test called the CSAT. This test is so important, construction is paused, flights are grounded and even the public is urged to keep noise down so students can focus.
According to the Korea Times, several students claim to feel frustrated that so many of their peers have started using A.I. A poll done by Korea Times shows approximately 54% of student used A.I at Yonsei University during a midterm exam for natural language processing. In my opinion, I would also feel frustrated. It annoys me that sometimes my peers get away with copying homework or cheating when I have to do the work.
I believe A.I is plaguing the academic environment. Just having an option to use A.I can lure students into cheating. Because students in Korea have such drive to get into SKY Universities, some must believe using A.I is the only option to win whilst competing against the whole nation.
Some believe A.I can be used to improve education, but I believe that in the hands of students it won’t be used for good. For example, A.I could be used to organize and summarize lectures and notes. Although that can be considered a good use of A.I in the academic background, we can see from the examples in Korea that students aren’t able to control themselves and will likely use it to cheat in tests. If Korean students are pressured enough to use A.I on the CSAT, I doubt the adolescents of the rest of the world would be able to control themselves. Instead, we could adapt and change our learning environment so that A.I could be used as a tool instead of a free A.
Interviewed by the New York Times, professor Park Joo-Ho, states “A.I. is a tool for retaining and organizing information so we can no longer evaluate college students on those skills, they should instead be tested on their creativity, something A.I cannot replicate.” He even went so far to say that the current system of education is out of date.
Even students agree that the use of A.I is inevitable. Using A.I for grading has already become a tool for teachers. Interviewed by the Korea Times, Woo Jung-sik, a senior at Hanyang University stated “It’s an indispensable tool for students these days.” Also interviewed by the Korea Times, senior student surnamed Lee said “Effectively using fast-evolving AI technology is also a skill. I don’t think simply using AI tools is inherently wrong.”
A.I can definitely be used for good; by slowly adjusting and regulating A.I and our education system, we can implicate A.I safely so that students won’t use it to cheat on exams. Possible solutions could be to do more tests on paper or use an application blocking app that will block students from using certain websites.
