In 1966, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum had just programmed the first AI chatbot: ELIZA. ELIZA started out as a computer experiment, simulating conversation and creating a pathway towards the future of artificial intelligence. Today, we see the growing effects of generative AI (GenAI) all around us–whether that be on social media, in businesses, or even in the classroom. As our society becomes more dependent and comfortable with the use of GenAI, our critical thinking skills weaken, right beside the motivation to utilize our own creativity.
Since ChatGPT, along with numerous other GenAI platforms, have become obtainable to the public, many young adults have become well acquainted with the idea of having instant access to information and concepts and the fact that a robot can substitute your own thinking and write your high school English essay for you. Helen Cooper, better known as Mrs. Cooper, is an English teacher here at Lincoln East High School. With teaching experience before students’ use of GenAI in the classroom spiked, Mrs. Cooper has seen firsthand how this technology is negatively affecting education.
“It makes kids really rusty with thinking. I can see them struggling through the thought process in a way that I haven’t seen in previous years and I think that that is because they’ve been using AI as a crutch,” Cooper said.
“There’s something weird that happened in the past couple years where even if I talk to a kid who’s used AI and say, hey, you can’t do this, that there isn’t a recognition that there’s anything wrong with that or that they are limiting their educational experience in any way.”
Studies show that our current generation’s IQ is the first to have shifted from steadily increasing to decreasing. One could argue that human dependency on GenAI plays a key factor in these statistics. The alarming piece isn’t even our inability to write our own essays, rather our loss of pure, soulful creativity. Niloufar Kholmatov is a senior here at East, and has spent a thoughtful amount of time curating ideas and creative pieces of writing. To see something artificial so abruptly take charge of something you’ve spent your life working to perfect isn’t just discouraging, it’s scary.
“Any of these very artistic fields are kind of at risk because of this, and I’ve seen it kind of personally as well,” Kholmatov said. “It’s really disheartening to see a lot of people use AI as this crutch because, I think, personally, that it’s better to make quote unquote ‘bad art’ or ‘bad writing’ than it is to not make something at all.”
We are living in an age where fully AI-composed literature, artworks, etc. exist and are hardly even frowned upon, potentially even normalized. It’s shown everywhere, how our mind naturally (and quickly!) adapts to the tools given to us. It’s seen through calculators computing basic math facts for us, through the completely unnecessary yet strangely sought-after Amazon products, and now through GenAI.
This isn’t to say that artificial intelligence is the worst piece of technology invented, because it’s not. Admittedly, it has many incredibly useful and fun components to it, and it sure does make finding simple answers far more efficient. Despite advanced AI systems being able to do everything from generating a video of a dancing cat to taking over simple redundant human jobs, GenAI is plainly unnecessary.
GenAI platforms are rapidly growing in popularity and intelligence, and if nothing changes, it’s inevitable that the negative statistics mentioned throughout this article will continue to unfold. As humans, we possess the capability to utilize the most powerful gift given to us: our brain. Let us hold fast to that gift, so that we are able to engage our natural creativity and critical thinking skills daily, without leaning on a computer’s programming to help carry us through.
