Rise of Artificial Intelligence Bots That Can Do School Essays Are Worrying Experts: Here’s Why

The rise of artificial intelligence bots that are capable of doing schoolwork has raised concerns among educational professionals because of their negative impacts on students, particularly on the younger generation.

A former teacher said that emerging AI chatbots that are capable of completing students' assignments and schoolwork will result in a learning crisis. The situation could force educators to rethink schooling entirely, they added.

New AI Chatbot Technology

The founder of Crush the College Essay and writing coach, Peter Laffin, said that the introduction of new AI technologies into schools that allows students to auto-generate essays could potentially blow up the entire writing education curriculum.

Laffin said that the situation could force authorities to rethink everything from the ground up, which could also be a good thing. The former teacher's remarks come after tech company OpenAI last week unveiled an AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

The new AI bot has stunned users with its advanced functions that allow it to generate school essays for any grade level. It is also capable of answering open-ended analytical questions, drafting marketing pitches, writing jokes, poems, and even computer code, as per Fox News.

Many online users were sharing their predictions on how the new sophisticated AI bot could impact several industries and render countless jobs obsolete. However, the chatbot's effect on education is at the forefront of Laffin's concern.

He said that he believes that students will be able to take full advantage of the chatbot undetected to complete their schoolwork. Laffin added that it would become increasingly difficult for educators to be able to tell the difference between the work done by students and the ones done by the AI chatbot.

According to NPR, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Ethan Mollick, posted on Twitter saying that AI has basically ruined homework. The AI tool has become an instant hit with many of Mollick's students, adding that the most widely used feature is how students cheat by plagiarizing the AI-written work.

The End of Essays as Homework?

However, despite the effects of the AI chatbot on academic fraud, Mollick noted that the new technology also has benefits as a learning companion. He said that he would use it as his own teacher's assistant that would help with crafting a syllabus, lecture, assignment, and grading rubric for MBA students.

Mollick noted that they can paste in entire academic papers and ask the chatbot to summarize the content. It can also be used to find an error in the coding and correct it while telling you why you got it wrong in the first place.

Lilian Edwards, who studies law, innovation, and society at Newcastle University, UK, said that at the moment, the chatbot is looking like the end of essays as an assignment for education.

On the other hand, a journalism scholar at Arizona State University in Tempe, Dan Gillmor, said that he fed the AI chatbot a homework question that he often assigned to his students. He noted that the article the bot produced would have earned a student a good grade, Nature reported.