AI is a 'lever', but not everyone can turn it on

Nowadays, most students use AI to do their homework. Photo: Evolllution .

In January 2023, a survey of 1,000 college students found that 9 out of 10 used ChatGPT to solve homework. At that time, the technology had only been available to the public for a little over 2 months.

AI is increasingly popular in the classroom environment, becoming an indispensable part of students' learning life. Despite its widespread use, not everyone who uses AI gets the same results.

An invisible wall has been created by AI between those who know how to use chatbots and those who don’t. This will gradually widen the gap in skills, as well as affect the problem-solving thinking of a part of the younger generation.

Normalizing the use of AI in learning

Talking about the influence of AI, Kieu Anh, a student at an international university in Ho Chi Minh City, said she has never seen anyone not using it in their studies. AI is present in every stage of a project, from explaining the requirements of the assignment, thinking of ideas, to supplementing and giving evaluation.

As a student of Digital Marketing, she said that she does not depend on, but utilizes AI to achieve the best results. She shared about the learning methods that she and other high-scoring students apply.

“There are three steps in my test-taking process: reading, understanding the question, and then executing it. AI acts as a consultant, helping to quickly summarize the first two steps, but is completely incapable of delving into and executing the ideas,” Kieu Anh said.

Tri Duc, a student at the University of Science and Technology who successfully created a Vietnamese typing tool using AI, said that using AI in learning is completely normal. “AI is really effective. I often use it to complete answers and think of detailed problems for the chatbot to solve,” Duc said.

Tri Duc, a student knowledgeable about artificial intelligence. Photo: NVCC.

Explaining the above action, Duc said that users must first know what they want and the purpose of use. Then, AI will support manual tasks such as programming or calculation, helping to significantly reduce time, so that learners have more opportunities to do other work.

A student at the same school as Duc, let’s call him Hai, shared that he learned a lot from AI in programming. “I only use it to solve really difficult problems, to refer to how chatbots solve problems, and then apply it to the next lesson,” Hai said.

On the other hand, some students rely on it and completely copy the AI code into their own solutions. “Some languages like C or C++ are easy to program, so ChatGPT can give results with just one line of code. When doing group work, I noticed that some of my classmates often use this method,” Hai said.

Two-way impact from AI

Mr. Tuan Nguyen, a lecturer at an international university in Ho Chi Minh City, explained that currently many schools in the world do not prohibit the use of artificial intelligence. This leads to many students being too dependent, even relying entirely on AI to produce results.

For those who know how to use it, AI can be a powerful tool, helping to optimize performance, suggest new ideas, and reduce completion times. However, for the rest, it seems to have the opposite effect.

When relying too much on AI, a person's thinking and problem-solving skills will be affected. A study by Dr. Sayed Ahmed, Associate Professor at the Institute of Business Administration (Pakistan), showed that out of 285 students using artificial intelligence, 68.9% showed laziness and 27.7% gradually lost decision-making skills.

Hai often had to correct the work of his classmates using AI in group activities because he was not deep enough to solve the problem. Meanwhile, Tri Duc, with his experience reading a lot of code, could recognize which work was mostly from AI, and whether the person submitting it was selective or not.

Over-reliance on AI leads to loss of ability to think and make decisions. Photo: Website Library Blog.

Agreeing with Duc, Mr. Tuan said that these papers are often mechanical, use high-level words or have some silly mistakes. “That is obvious. Therefore, banning the use of AI is no longer an important issue,” he shared.

If AI is a lever, those who know how to use it will jump forward faster, while those who depend on it will be pushed back. Overusing this technology will affect the ability to understand lessons independently, brainstorm to solve problems, leading to a decrease in competitiveness in the real working environment.

What is needed now is to rebuild the standard and view artificial intelligence as a library. In every class, Mr. Tuan often reminds students that using AI to live a better life, or letting life depend on AI, is all your choice.

Source: https://znews.vn/ai-la-don-bay-nhung-khong-phai-ai-cung-bat-duoc-post1554562.html