How Mid-Michigan Students Are Learning in the Age of AI

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Artificial Intelligence has found its way into the classroom.

While it can be beneficial for students and teachers, it also has its drawbacks.

At the East Lansing Public Library, we checked out what parents and students think about the increased use of artificial intelligence, heading into a new school year.

Mother of two, Rebecca Rook, says she is sad to see books taking a backseat to computers.

"So I miss kind of the old way of doing it, because AI is kind of killing their education system I feel," Rook says.

Her 14-year-old daughter Josie, a freshman at East Lansing High School, says AI is hard to avoid.

"Sometimes I had a lot of work, so I would just use AI," Josie says.

Classroom workload is not just a burden on students, but also on teachers, according to Aman Yadav, an educational technology professor at Michigan State University.

"Teachers are overburdened and underpaid, so using these chatbots certainly helps them be more productive, reduces their workload, and helps them in the classroom," Yadav says.

Chatbots are artificial intelligence programs that take a person's written or spoken input and turn it into content.

"So if you ask it to write about a princess in the forest, it will come up with a different story every time," Yadav says.

And he says "every time" the story will be convincing, because the chatbot has been trained, using input from millions of other stories.

But the fact remains, AI doesn't understand what it's writing...

"And what I worry is that kids, as they engage with these chatbots, will think that it understands them, what they're asking, and that it's responding to their needs, but that's not true, because it doesn't have any understanding, because computers don't care," Yadav says.

Professor Yadav says computers, especially, don't care if the information they deliver is accurate, so schools need to develop AI literacy programs for young people.

"To help them understand how these tools are developed, how they work, so they understand that the information they might get from these tools is not always accurate," Yadav says.

He also points out, there's little to no research on the benefits of AI in learning, but there are studies that show a dependence on AI reduces critical thinking.

"Kids will lose their own ability to think, because it's easy to ask a chatbot a question," Yadav says.

For high school freshman Josie Rook, a new school year means a renewed commitment to relying on her "natural intelligence."

"My goal is to do work myself, and to show how I really feel, and help other students," Josie says.

With more school districts embracing AI-powered learning tools, there could be additional financial pressure on families.

That could come in the form of updated computers and internet, plus a subscription to an AI platform can cost $20 per month.

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