Before Covid-19, I liked to play with the dirt near the playground structure, even though my socks would be wet and my shoes would be hard to walk in. I’m not a true visual artist, but I enjoyed drawing figures without bodies, just the blocky head. I took risks, writing words spelled wrong or drawing stupid things and showing them off like they were the greatest things ever.
On the day I turned nine, I had my first zoom meeting, and thereafter started learning how to use technology. Now, Artificial Intelligence— or robots that are coded to know and use information from humans to develop— makes technology more versatile. I use AI to study for tests in History and Math. I study how to graph trigonometric functions with the help of ChatGPT. Now, AI draws pictures instead of me. There is no playground anymore, but rather computers and AI-generated videos that take up my time.
The U.S Government finds it important that students are knowledgeable about AI so that they can work better in the workforce when they are adults. Schools make policies, like mine, which attempt to give students parameters that encourage proper use, which is a term that is loosely defined.
For example, the policy allows students to brainstorm and get sources from AI. In other words, they can effectively ask AI to double check their ideas without thinking for themselves.
Sophia Yaokasin, a debate competitor, shared her perspective.
“I just feel like I’m not getting the best information,” sophomore Julia Bergeron, who doesn’t use AI, said. “I feel like I could come up with things on my own more than I could get something from it.”
Meanwhile, we can also worry about how accurate the information is due to AI “hallucinations”, which are things AI makes up because of its design or because of insufficient training data. These AI hallucinations could result in you believing things that aren’t actually true.
I find myself thinking about the future, and how many risks I will take without AI getting in the way. I hope that I am still independent when I’m an adult, because at this rate, many people will probably lose jobs or rely on AI to work. I want to be myself, not what AI tells me to do.
