GenAI...

     GenAI in the Classroom

My feelings on GenAI, even throughout these readings, have changed only slightly. I do believe we should teach it in classrooms, in the reading by Vee there was a quote that stood out to me that changed my thinking. “we will let our own decisions about AI govern yours. It’s a fundamentally authoritative stance: I know what’s good for you” (Vee, pg. 1).  I do not want to walk into my classroom for the first time and have this mindset. This dismantles the safe space I want to work towards. I don’t feel comfortable using AI; however, I want to teach the students the good and the bad. They are individuals, and at the end of the day, they make their own choices. I do not want to strip away their agency because I disagree. If they need help writing or checking their grammar, then I can not stop them from using AI. It is everywhere. I will not grade a copy-and-paste AI essay. I will let them know that when we have these open discussions about AI. In addition, the Estep article aligned with my views. I have never thought of compassionate teaching with the use of AI. This opened my eyes to the labels I have set for people who use AI. When you think of a student who uses AI, you may jump to saying that they are lazy. Yet this reading dives deep into dismantling those thoughts and having compassion. Which brought me to the idea that a student may be using AI because they are scared to ask for help, are exhausted from their life, or have too much going on to sit and write. We need to teach with compassion so that students understand they are safe in the classroom. Weaving this in with AI, having those set rules in the beginning of how students will use AI in the classroom. They may check for grammar mistakes and use it for research that will make them critically think about what is true or false. 

I used ChatGPT to help me with my papers in college before I knew the damage AI was doing, because it was easy. My life is chaotic at times. I am transparent with my mental health and my insecurities. I don’t have a lot of self-esteem in general, but mainly in education. I don’t feel qualified or smart enough. During my first BA, I was doing a lot of research for many different classes. I couldn’t keep up, and those thoughts were creeping in. Instead of asking for help or taking a break, I used AI. It helped me finish on time, and even though I look back, I hate that I did that. I can’t take it back. I needed it then, so who am I to judge if a student needs to use it for research because they are too tired, overwhelmed, or don’t understand? Instead of punishing the student, I want to work with them. I wish my professors worked with me more since we were all so close in the Women’s and Gender Studies department.

The reading that departed from my views the most was the choice reading that I chose by Li, Cyborg Composing with AI. I did not agree with the human AI hybrid and making poems with ChatGPT. With what I know about the environment and the dangers, this is dangerous. It is purely for joy now. A joy that is killing the earth, and I can’t stand by that in the slightest. This is where GenAI starts to leave for me. From this article, I do not believe AI should have been made public, if people are using it to make poems that wouldn't have taken them long to just prove how AI works? How far will they go in a classroom? I can't sit in a classroom, and have my students make a poem with AI knowing I am causing harm to the environment. There is a time and place for AI, making whole assignments out of it, is not something I agree with. 

AI has been used for decades in science, and astrophysicists have been using it for years. However, they call it machine knowledge. When a telescope takes a picture of space and captures hundreds of galaxies. Are they going to hire thousands of astrophysicists to study and classify each one? They can not afford that, and it will never get done. It will take longer to manually classify them than we have time on the planet. Machine knowledge helps aid in the process of this science. Though it is machine knowledge because they have to double-check the work. There is still a team to help classify and ensure everything is accurate. We can’t trust AI, no matter how much human interaction we try with it. Just because it was built by humans doesn’t mean it is good. Cigarettes were made by humans and plants, and look at the death toll for lung cancer. We can’t trust something that is harming us and the planet we are on.  

Without AI, how are we supposed to tell the flat earthers that they are wrong? Machine knowledge has helped us prove many people wrong. We need it in some capacities, in the scientific world, it needs to be used. In the classroom, that is where I have doubts.

Thank you to my best friend who majored in astrophysics at UMN for having an extremely long discussion about galaxies, stellar collapse, and telescopes for me to understand AI in one aspect of the scientific world.