“You won't always have a calculator in your pocket.” That's a phrase echoed by teachers to multiple generations of students, and it hasn’t aged well.
Today, almost everyone has a calculator in their pocket as an app on their phone.
James Helfrich, a Computer Science and Engineering Department faculty member at BYU-Idaho, used the phrase to provide an example of how people treat artificial intelligence in classrooms today.
“I think the knee-jerk reaction is to call it plagiarism. It's no different than when I was in second grade and my teacher told me not to use my calculator," Helfrich said. “No, calculators don’t rot your brain and people don’t do long division professionally anymore and we are better off for it.”
AI has the potential to change the way people work and learn, but how should people appropriately use it?
“I think it [AI] is a way of just cheating.” said Hannah Wilkinson, a Marriage and Family Studies major at BYU-Idaho. “It’s not really your own ideas.”
Students who BYU-Idaho spoke with about using AI for assistance on school work seem split on their responses.
Some see AI like Wilkinson, as something that can be used to cheat. Other students like Chris Brock see it as a developing tool that will force people to work differently.
Helfrich sees AI as a tool that will allow students to have a private tutor in their pocket.
“If you hire someone a personal tutor versus putting them in a class they are going to do two standard deviations better,” said Helfrich. “This is going to make your below average student above average, and your average student exceptional. It will make exceptional students off the charts.”
Helfrich referenced “The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring” by Benjamin S. Bloom and applied its findings to the potential future AI holds as a private tutor for students.
Faculty member Lee Barney says his classes utilizing AI right now are seeing benefits in the learning process not seen in other classrooms.
“Other instructors that have come into my classroom and taken over for a day have stated that the students in my classroom are way beyond the learning that’s happening in the other more traditional classroom,” Barney said.
While AI will change jobs, it may ultimately make life easier and work and schooling more efficient.
“More efficient is an understatement,” Helfrich said. “The reality of the situation is when everyone graduates they’re going to have AI available, and we have to prepare them [students] for that new workplace. We have to anticipate how every career is going to be adjusted to accommodate this, and we have to re-write our curriculums and re-write our assignments so they can reflect this new reality.”
Finding an easy conclusion for the questions surrounding AI is difficult. There are some great insights to be gleaned. As developments continue there may be less concern and more hope for the role AI will play in the future.