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Another Tool in the Toolbox

“He’s literally AI bro” I yelled through the microphone at my friend while we fought

another player in a video game. We had recently been accustomed to using this term for worse

players, as they sometimes looked like they were being played by a computer. The words “AI”

had became an afterthought and had become integrated into our vocabulary, but AI has always

been a lingering interest. My fascination started as early as asking Siri random questions hoping

I could stump the algorithm. Or playing akinator for hours as it guessed what I was thinking of

almost every time. Though I didn't realize it initially, I soon came to understand that AI is all

around us. Navigation apps, facial recognition, social media, word checkers, and recently

chatbots, AI consumes a good portion of our digital lives. As it continued to integrate into our

lives it became a background idea to many, including me.

It wasn’t until early December while watching a TikTok about a new chatbot by the

name “ChatGPT” that my interest was sparked again. This chatbot could answer all your

questions in any form you request, create essays, analyze notes or transcripts, code, create

stories, and much more. I began experimenting myself and realized how helpful this could be

when it came to many of the things I do daily. I have always searched and strived to improve

productivity and find shortcuts, so when I found a way to give me efficient notes, new ideas, and

more I hopped on the train just like millions of others. Soon along with others I realized this

could be something that would have a real impact on education, and quickly it became a

worldwide phenomenon. Teachers began looking for faked essays or notes and the website was

quickly banned on the school wifi. Educators began to see it as a cheating tool or a workaround,

which for some was the only way they knew how to use it. Though this negative narrative grew, I

always looked past it, Seeing the potential it had to really make a difference. With more personal

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research I realized that ChatGPT and many other websites had a multitude of ways to help

students' lives. And I began to use these websites personally, to help with essay prompts,

summarize notes, transcript videos, help with grammar and any other way I saw fit. I began

sharing my findings with close friends but while looking at other students I realized this

information could benefit almost anyone. The drive to help other students be their best self,

combined with my overall interest in computer science and this newfound spectacle of AI, led

me to explore and investigate the question: How can Artificial Intelligence technology advance

learning and study habits within students?

AI or Artificial Intelligence has been a part of our society for much longer than most

think. However, first, we should acknowledge that the very name artificial intelligence is

sometimes seen as unhelpful, “Instead, some researchers prefer augmented intelligence, which

retains the human brain as the source of intelligence” (Fadel). AI is simply defined as any

simulation of human intelligence processes by machines. The first ideas about AI arose with the

creation of the Turing Test, a hypothetical imitation game that tests a machine’s ability to exhibit

human behavior (Smith et al.). This was the long term goal but small steps were needed to be

taken, and in the early 1950s the creation of Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon’s,

Logic Theorist, became the first AI program. This program created mathematical proofs and

solved problems much better than high level mathematicians. This was one of the first showings

of what AI could be, and soon after AI began to flourish. Computers could store more

information and became faster, cheaper, and more accessible and machine learning grew

exponentially (Anyoha). The next twenty or so years AI research continued to advance until it hit

an unfortunate “AI winter” during the cold war where funding was greatly reduced and

advancements slowed to a halt for the next twenty years. This was due to a report done by

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Professor Sir James Lighthill of Cambridge University in 1973. This report talked very

negatively towards AI and ultimately funding was greatly reduced (Smith et al.). Though this

slump did put a temporary halt on advancements, the massive technology boom in the early 21st

century AI was quickly on the rise.

Massive companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon are just some of the many

corporations that have caused us to use AI daily, in everything from facial recognition, to

navigational apps, social media feeds, google searches, emails, and much more use AI. Almost

every app you use has AI, and the ways to use it have grown quickly in the recent past (Díaz).

Chat GPT, the most popular of these new programs, was developed by Open AI, a company

founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever,

Peter Thiel, Olivier Grabias and others, who collectively pledged one billion dollars for the

company. After developing a few prior projects, many of which were very innovative, they

recently released in late November their new chatbot ChatGPT (Open AI). Experimenting

personally with this bot some of the things it can do are truly surprising. Its sophistication is

stunning and it is able to answer almost any prompt you can think of. Soon it became a

worldwide sensation and as more and more people experimented with the bot, more and more

ways it could be used came to light. When it comes to improving student life, ChatGPT has a

multitude of ways that could, and in my opinion should, be used everywhere.

The question arises of what is the extent that AI should be used by students? To

investigate this further, as well as other questions, I hopped on a call with Gracee Agrawal who

holds degrees from both John Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley.

With a degree in biomedical engineering Gracee Agrawal has previously worked for both Apple

Health and a fairly successful startup Modern Fertility, working now as a product manager. In

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these fields she has seen AI used in a multitude of ways, commenting on how they would use

machine learning to study EEG signals and depth of anesthesia or how they would use detection

AI for heart rate, temperature and menstrual cycle predictions, says Agrwal . She also has used

ChatGPT personally “to add a little bit more flair to my language” she says as she is “not a

native English speaker”. She also uses it as a starting point for research by asking for prompts or

topics of a question, she stated. Though she doubts whether or not it would be good for students

to use, “it's debatable whether that's a really good use case for students or not. I think it can help

them do better in school, but also you are so young and so ready to learn new things.The

question is, could it be more helpful for you to learn that yourself?” Agrawal states.

This ethical barrier is one that I have constantly reconsidered throughout research and it

is very difficult to provide a clear cut answer. Though she does believe it could be helpful if used

in the right ways, “If you're trying to learn a concept and you want it to be explained in different

ways. Sometimes it can be hard to land at the right spot on Google, but on ChatGPT it can be

helpful. Especially the fact that you can ask questions back and forth. That's probably the most

useful. Otherwise, in Google you search for your next question and then you land up at very

similar answers or completely something that has lost the context” Agrawal explains.

Agrawal also talks about essay prompts and how if, “you submit it as an English essay

prompt. I think that would be unfair, but then the question is what should English essay prompts

look like?” This goes farther into the future of this sort of technology and how it could affect

education as a whole. Ultimately she states, “It's such a tricky thing to be balanced. But I

definitely think students should use it. Because, first of all, like that's what the professional world

is using and it's good to always have the tools in hand. Think about a calculator as an analogy, of

course students should know how to do 2+3 or 15+17 but you do not need to know how to

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multiply random five digit numbers together. It just doesn't have any real world use case, just use

the calculator for that. I think it's similar, using AI for things that are not basic or are time saving,

but at the same time it will require changes from the teacher's side as well, I think primarily I

would say the differences which should be on the evaluation part. I think not keeping evaluation

to be so straightforward as like, hey, here's homework, write an essay and come back. But instead

the evaluation is a little bit more like, hey, let's have a discussion.” These comments effectively

gave me great insight into the implications of AI and ChatGPT and some ideas on where to draw

the line between cheating and improving quality of life. It will be very important to decide this

line for the future of this technology and is something I looked to continue to explore.

Looking for different angles on the topic I decided to interview another person working

in the field. I was fortunate enough to have a talk over zoom with Siddharth Sanan right after he

attended a robotics conference. Siddharth has a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon with a

postdoc at Harvard building exoskeleton robots for disabled individuals, he has also worked in a

startup for security drones and now is researching robotics at Omron Research Center of

America. With his extensive background in robotics , “almost everything we do is AI, lots of

different types such as deep learning and vision based intelligence” Siddarth stated. I then asked

his opinions on ChatGPT as a productivity increaser. “Yes, I think it’s another tool in the box.

Back when I was a kid, we had books, and then the internet came along, and more and more

information was available, then Google and now ChatGPT. It just gives you another tool to kind

of probe whatever information is out there. It’s more like a partner where google is more

informatics” he concluded. Moving the conversation more towards students and how they should

use this tool he stated, “It is great at giving a starting point, a framework to build your ideas on.

This applies to almost any topic. So it’s a great way to understand where to go with your

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research, it also is great for creativity as it can help for creation and inspiration of new ideas” this

insight was more on the starting of ideas side which is very interesting as many use it to solve

problems rather than give framework. Moving the conversation towards ways to stop students

from using it to cheat he states, “well you can always ask for citations, as ChatGPT doesn’t give

any. But it also boils down to ethics that are built at a very young age. I think it is great for

building frameworks and ideas and as detection programs get better it will be much harder for

students to cheat”. When asked about the future of these chatbots he says, “I hope one day they

are integrated as assistants for both the students and teachers, teachers are able to use it to give

personal learning and maybe for translations, and students should use it as another tool just like

the calculator. I also think that soon the bot will be embodied with a personality and emotions

which can make learning more fun and effective.” Gaining insight from another professional

gave me a better path to continue to focus my findings on helping students and drawing a line

between cheating and productivity.

With these insights into where to draw the line between cheating and improvement of life

I continued my research on some of the ways that AI could be used. Many of the great

implications that AI could make come on the side of the educators. One of the biggest ways it

could be used is the broad term of adaptive learning where, “AI assesses your learning speed and

skills and creates a guided experience that helps you with your weaknesses, while also being able

to present material in understandable terms, set the perfect pace, and help educators identify

disabilities” (Lynch). Though an implication like this would be great for many students, creating

an impact on an education system that has been stagnant for many years will prove extremely

difficult. While focusing on what students can do to help themselves is a much easier task. So

with that and help from College Vidya’s article “What Is Chat GPT? - 10 Ways to USE Chat

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GPT for Students.” I continued to experiment and build a repertoire of uses that any student

could benefit from. Some of my findings from experimenting on ChatGPT include.

The summarization of longer essays and articles for easier reading and retention.

ChatGPT can easily understand and read long articles and display the information in whatever

form fits your needs. You can select the length, details, topic specificity, and more for the

summary. I even personally used it to summarize research for this exact paper.

The generation of ideas or prompts for essays and creative writing pieces. ChatGPT has a

very interesting use where instead of having it write an entire essay, which can contain many

grammatical errors and misinformation, you can ask for ideas or prompts about a ceratin topic.

An example in my own works could have been asking ChatGPT “Give me some ideas for

research paper prompts about AI helping students learn or study”. The algorithm would provide

a multitude of prompts that you can specify in length, form, or any other needed change.

The summarization of class notes and creation of study guides. You can easily copy and

paste your own long page of notes and ask the chat-bot to return a summarization with again any

specifications that you may require. You could aso ask study questions about certain topics based

on your notes which could prove to be a very beneficial study tool that can be tailored exactly to

your needs.

Being able to provide detailed frameworks and outlines for writing. ChatGPT can provide

outlines for many types of writing such as emails, applications, essays, resumes, and more. Just a

simple prompt such as “give me an email template for asking someone to interview them for a

research project” would return a detailed outline with spaces for you to put your own outlined

information. This can help many students become more professional, save time, and ultimately

learn how to do these things on their own.

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Help manage time and create schedules. ChatGPT can create very detailed study plans

and schedules based on any input that it is given. You could effectively input everything you

want to get done with your current schedule, weather that is school, sports, homework etc. and

ask it to find the best way to fit everything together and it will create extensive guides. This

again comes with the utmost amount of customization as well.

Uses for overall research and guiding your research. Though ChatGPT’s database doesn’t

not hold everything on google much of the basic information is held within its “brain” and it is

able to answer most basic questions that you may need. This may save lots of time as sometimes

google is hard to navigate and find exactly what you are looking for.

Experimenting and researching personally has opened me up to many of the possibilities

that such a tool provides. I have also discovered other websites such as AI transcription tools like

ParrotAI, or image generation tools like Dall-e that can generate any image from a prompt. The

world of AI is rapidly growing and the implications are endless and my research will certainly be

outdated, maybe even by the time this is read. But the main conclusions I have drawn from my

finding come to this, ChatGPT should be seen and used as a tool not as a workaround. Though

this will be difficult for many students and teachers to come to terms with as it is currently used

for cheating, it is what will eventually help them in the future. Just like the calculator helps with

math but you have to know how to use it, ChatGPT can help with your education if used

correctly. I have also concluded that the line between cheating and productivity is a hard line to

draw and believe it will have many changes made to it in the near future. Right now this line is to

be drawn by the teachers and students should respect those limitations and use the AI in ways

that are not plagiarism or straight up cheating. I soon believe that lines will be broken and a new

standard will be made, but until then, the ways that I outlined in my findings are the ways that I

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believe it should be used. Teachers may not agree but they also didn't agree when the calculator

was introduced. The world is rapidly changing and more and more tools are quickly becoming

available to both students and the rest of the world. The time of change is upon us and will

continue to explode rapidly. ChatGPT is just the start of a new wave of advancements and I

cannot wait for what's to come. These new programs are tools and should be used as such, I think

that it is time to become acquainted and acquire another tool in the toolbox.

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Works Cited

Books:

Fadel, Charles, et al. Artificial Intelligence in Education: Promises and Implications for

Teaching and Learning. Independently Published, 2019.

Electronic Sources:

Anyoha, Rockwell. “The History of Artificial Intelligence.” Science in the News, Harvard, 28

August 2017. Web. 14 Mar. 2023.

Díaz, David. “Artificial intelligence and its impact on everyday life.” University of York, 21

March 2022. Web. 14 Mar. 2023.

Lynch, Matthew. “7 Ways That Artificial Intelligence Helps Students Learn.” The Edvocate.

Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

OpenAI. “About.” OpenAI. Web. 14 Mar. 2023.

Smith, Chris, et al. “The History of Artificial Intelligence.” History of Computing, University of

Washington, December 2006. Web. 14 Mar. 2023.

“What Is Chat GPT? - 10 Ways to USE Chat GPT for Students.” College Vidya, 2 February

2023. Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

Primary Sources:

Agrawal, Gracee. “Gracee Agrawal Interview.” Personal interview. 22 Feb. 2023.

Sanan, Siddharth. “Siddharth Sanan Interview.” Personal interview. 9 Mar. 2023.

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Works Consulted

Books:

Yu, Shengquan, and Yu Lu. An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Education. Springer

Nature Singapore, 2021. 20 Mar. 2023.

Electronic Sources:

“43 Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Education – University of San Diego Online Degrees.”

University of San Diego Online Degrees. Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI).” Teaching & Learning Transformation Center, 2 February 2023.

Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

“Artificial Intelligence and the future of education.” European Commission, 25 October 2022.

Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

Gillani, Nabeel. “ChatGPT Isn't the Only Way to Use AI in Education.” WIRED, 26 January

2023. Web.19 Mar. 2023.

Lynch, Matthew. “My Vision for the Future of Artificial Intelligence in Education.” The

Edvocate, 6 December 2018. Web. 19 Mar. 2023.

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