How does AI technology affect education? What are the benefits and or dangers of this technology?

JACKSON, TENN (WNBJ)-

You may have heard of AI tools like CHAT GTP where you give the program a prompt like, "Why are trees green?" Or even "Write me an essay about women's role in World War Two".

And the program, in a matter of seconds, generates a response.

“It's hard not to get starry-eyed to think about how students might use this technology in their real-world work setting in the future. But with that also brings tangible concerns to how we fundamentally do higher education in education space," said Assistant Professor of Management at Union University April Rpwsey.

Rowsey says one of the main concerns is using ai to write essays, but it isn’t easy to get away with it.

“There are a myriad of ways that you can check to see if It has been involved in the creation of any work product. One of the ones that we use is Zero GTP, where we plug in passages of text and it will tell you what percent the tool has been used for the creation of that content, Rowsey said.

Union University does not yet have an official guidance when it comes to a.i tools

“We're still waiting to see how it unfolds. So it's very much at the instructor level instructor decision about whether we want to bring this into the classroom and try and test it out and work with it, or whether it is absolutely prohibited contraband," Rowsey said.

Rowsey believes that there are some positive aspects of AI technology, “One of the things that I like to think about when you think about an AI tool is just the exciting promise and possibility that it brings when students leave higher ed, how it can make them more productive, more efficient in some ways, even more creative in a shorter time frame that they might not normally have gotten to or arrived.”

But Rowsey believes that it is important to talk to students about the benefits and the dangers of using AI, “Many of them don't feel comfortable in having these tools used for specific professions. Think about preparation for nursing or for health care or for law….they want to make sure that they have a solid mastery of that content that they're owning here in this space.”

Rowsey says AI and it’s role in the workplace and the classroom is going to be a topic of discussion for a long time.