AI: The Guide for Success or tool for Failure

Since the development of Siri, Artificial intelligence has gone a long way from just a voice on your phone answering your questions, to multiple servers of databases working together to operate and answer any and all questions, such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek. However, as time has progressed and advancements have been made in this field, many have figured out that AI can be used academically, either for help or to simply give them all the answers needed for homework and classwork – or worse yet – tests and quizzes essential for the class. 

Although AI is positive in theory, many use it differently than it was intended and now it has a notorious reputation amongst schools, teachers, and students. However, albeit the negative uses, many students still think it can be quite a helpful tool, and that it’s only been misused.

We start off strongly with the united opinions of both Sophomores – Ernesto Cejas and Isabella Fuentes – who both believe that AI is bad for academic use. 

Asking Ernesto as to why he finds AI bad for school use, he states that “It kills creativity from the students and it also doesn’t allow you to think, all you have to do is type in the question and you get the answer.”

Isabella says that “AI kills passion, like, it makes people more dependent on AI to do their work, and they stop thinking for themselves and critically, just overall. And because of that they don’t do what they’re passionate about.” 

Junior Daniel Smith adds to the list with, “I don’t think AI is helpful to students because it prevents them from doing the one thing that people go to school for: learning.”

However, a handful of students claim that AI is good. 

Sophomore Dante Olivera states that using AI academically is good because “it will be very useful in the future”, which is proven, as AI is developing rapidly to aid us in the future. 

Another student mentions that AI is good: “I believe AI can help students understand and streamline work in many ways; whether it be for missed lectures or cramming for an exam. Though I do also believe that AI can become detrimental to students when used as a crutch and cannot act independently without it”. 

Sophomore Luis Urdaneta has the same take in that AI is beneficial, but that many people use it incorrectly. He further shares that, “I feel like AI is supposed to bore you with assistance rather than something that does your work for you. You still do your work yourself, but if something is missing or you don’t understand, AI is a great tool to help you.”

Overall, when looking through the opinions, statements, and reasonings behind the statements of every interviewed student, their pros and cons can amount to this:

Positives of Artificial Intelligence

• Help assist students in missed lessons
• Growing to be useful in the future
• A great tool to help students sharpen their skills in certain classes
• Test preparation

Negatives of Artificial Intelligence

• Overdependence
• Loss of interest or passion
• Inability to learn
• Cuts out creativity

Although your standpoint on AI might remain the same, the consequences -both positive and negative- of using such a tool allows for a more well-rounded approach to its use. It merely comes down to your self-control; to not misuse such a powerful tool no matter how tempting it might be, because no matter what, how it’s used will determine how it affects its user.