By 2050, up to 800 million jobs could be lost because of AI.
The extreme reliance on AI services is softening the drive to come up with creative and original thoughts and ideas. It may also lead to the exclusion of important details and facts, limiting one’s own understanding of the material.
AI has already shaken up and changed many jobs in multiple different fields.
One field that it has already changed is writing, this was demonstrated in the Writers Guild of America strike in mid-2023, where a focal point of the protest was that AI should only be used as a tool for research and not to replace actual human writing.
But, AI tools, especially ChatGPT, from my perspective are commonly seen as tools that will fuel creativity, not hurt it. It can introduce people to new ideas or solutions to a problem. It can also help to find resources for studying or research.
In a survey from Lightricks which asked 1000 social media creators about how they use AI, 86% answered yes to that AI “positively impacts my creative process.”
Although AI can help introduce people to new ideas, this will just cause people to think too much alike, leading to a decrease in cognitive diversity. If anybody can generate any piece of media they want, people will give up on trying to learn.
English teacher Laura Fitch has concerns with the potential of people to depend too heavily on ChatGPT.
“I think maybe there’s ways that it can enhance creativity,” Fitch said. “But, for a lazy person…they might think ‘let it think for me, and I don’t have to think.’”
AI has already fueled the creation of AI generated art, movies, songs and even more.
Disney has already faced backlash for apparently using AI to create the poster for ‘Loki,’ and has been accused of using AI to develop their recent movie, ‘Wish.’
Disney doing this in the middle of the writers strike honestly feels like a huge slap in the face to me. I also think it’s just embarrassing for the company to be doing this, Disney’s older animation styles were so beautiful, well-thought out, and you could tell people put a lot of time into them. The new animation from ‘Wish’ looks like it’s a rip-off of a Disney original.
This AI isn’t exclusively used by big corporations either, 43% of college students have used ChatGPT and 26% of K-12 teachers have caught a student cheating using ChatGPT.
Ever since Covid, cheating has significantly increased in both high school and college settings.
In a survey about cheating during online exams and its rise during Covid-19, over 54% of students self-reported they had cheated during an online exam, simply because they had the opportunity to do so.
In today’s world, cheating in school has become so easy people will cheat just because they can, not because they are necessarily struggling or behind.
Students today have access to thousands of resources to cheat on tests and assignments, with ChatGPT driving those resources to extreme levels.
Over 75% of Stanford University students have reported they have cheated on tests or assignments. This is over a 75% rise from only 20% reported in the 1940s.
Students’ extreme reliance on ChatGPT, especially at a college level, shows little hope for the future of the world if we continue to let machines think for us.
If a medical student cheats on all his exams, does not get caught, then gets a job as a surgeon, how will he know how to perform a surgery? If this pattern keeps happening, nobody will know how to perform a surgery. Then, one of two things will happen.
Either, the price of the surgery will drive up to extreme places, or somebody will invent an AI machine to perform that surgery. Which will then further destroy even more jobs not already replaced by AI.
Instead of people completely using AI to get work done, we need to utilize AI to do the less creative parts of work, and to stress the importance of human originality and creativity.
“It (ChatGPT) can help us to connect to good resources,” Fitch said. “You can ask it what would be the best resources for and then ask it about a specific prompt. It can help us without just replacing our writing.”
Instead of schools completely trying to stop student use of ChatGPT, schools should let students use ChatGPT as a resource to find sources and generate ideas for different topics.
By promoting a balance between utilizing technology and fostering students’ independent writing abilities, schools can cultivate a learning environment that encourages creativity, critical thinking and the development of valuable skills.
Not all AI is bad, and in the changing world of new technology potentially replacing all human jobs, it’s now more important than ever to stress the importance of human originality and creativity.
Right now schools, including Solon, are completely cracking down on it. I really don’t think this does much for stopping the use of AI, people will just find a way around it.
In order to adapt to the changing world, schools need to work with the newer generations to cultivate newer curriculum that allow for the use of AI technology because running away from it will not change the future of technology.
