5 FEATURE
OPINION
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THE VOL. 60, NO. 6
8 CENTERSPREAD
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GUIDE TO : LOCAL ART GALLERIES
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SMOKE SIGNAL MISSION SAN JOSE HIGH SCHOOL
February 21, 2025
41717 PALM AVENUE, FREMONT, CA 94539
By the numbers
integration of ai into msj
By Roshan Annamalai, Kanupriya Goyal, Scarlett Huang & Rishab Shah Staff Writers
With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in the last decade, AI has expanded into various fields. In particular, AI has transformed the educational sector for both students and instructors. To gain insight into the extent of AI’s influence at MSJ and explore its benefits and drawbacks, the Smoke Signal conducted a school-wide survey with 175 student responses over February 1-7 and interviewed faculty regarding this topic.
BACKGROUND
Strongly Affected
5+ Level of Affectiveness
The prevalence of AI has surged over the past decade, fueled by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent shift to virtual learning environments during distance learning. Since then, AI has been used to personalize student instruction, automate and streamline administrative tasks, manage online classrooms, grade homework, and analyze student learning data. More recently, the advance of generative AI with platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini has exposed such technological tools to a broader audience of students and teachers, opening new avenues for the use of AI in education. Brainstorming ideas, completing homework assignments, writing essays, creating assignments — all can be completed instantly with a simple command. A 2024 survey by Internet Matters proved that 44% of K-12 students use generative AI tools, with the majority of them applying it to homework. Another 2024 report by the Center for Democracy & Technology found that 59% of teachers believed at least one of their students used generative AI for school. However, not just students rely on AI — generative AI tools that assist teachers with lessons pervade the industry. From AI-enhanced question writing and correction on platforms like Quizziz to building presentations using AI on Slidesgo, this tool can be extremely helpful indeed for teachers. The schoolwide survey found that students use AI for a number of reasons, including homework assistance, studying for tests multiple times a week, summarizing texts, and write and edit essays. All in all, the pervasive nature of AI is proven by both the statistics and the clear global social movement currently happening, even on the most local level, namely within MSJ.
How much do you think using AI has affected your academic integrity/honesty?
5 4 3 2 1
Barely Affected
10
20
30
40
50
60
Number of MSJ Students
TYPES OF AI USED
ETHICS OF AI USAGE
As students and teachers have become more accustomed to using AI in their everyday learning and teaching, many new applications of AI for education are constantly being developed. The most significant innovation in the field is AI-powered chatbots utilizing generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models like ChatGPT and Gemini, which assist students with everything from learning to doing student work. The transformer architecture, pre-trained on the internet, generates human-like text for various applications at a user’s request. Furthermore, paraphrasing AIs such as QuillBot and Apple Intelligence focus on making textual and stylistic modifications and can be used to bypass AI or plagiarism detectors. This concept of bypassing AI detectors is taken further with AI humanizers, designed to bypass AI detectors by making the writing sound more human. However, there is also AI designed to help students learn without doing the work for them. Quizlet, Khan Academy, and Knowt assist with exam preparation using flashcards and chatbots.
AI is a valuable tool, but many questions arise regarding its ethics, especially in educational settings. There is still ambiguity about where AI platforms source their information. Generative AI companies have admitted to using databases filled with copyrighted work, often without the creator’s permission, to train the AI algorithm. Another problem AI faces is that it usually generates plausible yet false information, such as fake quotes and statistics, known as hallucinations. Furthermore, there are environmental concerns due to the energy consumption of data centers that power AI systems. AI has been reported to cause significantly higher carbon emissions, water usage, and generation of electronic waste. These platforms also require tens of thousands of state-of-the-art graphical processing units that require rare-earth elements to build hardware, which have negative impacts such as soil erosion and pollution. As for academia, many teachers have raised apprehensions about how using AI decreases students’ abilities to learn and think for themselves. In a 2017 paper, Google Brain published “Attention is All You Need.” This paper introduced a new way for large language models (LLMs) to process language by focusing on how every word in a prompt relates to each other rather than just looking at words in isolation. Known as the transformer model, this became a significant stepping point in AI. It made it practical enough for students to consider it a quick and easy solution to ease the burden of laborious schoolwork. Some types of AI, like AI Humanizer, are designed to help students cheat the system and bypass AI detectors. The companies that make these products often produce social media ads targeted to high school and university students. However, other AI platforms, like Khan Academy, are designed to aid students by providing tools such as studying bots, which can effectively summarize and teach concepts to students. While some types of AI help students learn better, they don’t offset the other issues. Reading comprehension levels, especially in the U.S., have steadily declined, with some researchers attributing this to LLMs. EDUCAUSE Review states that AI could affect students’ social development, diminishing human interaction and causing a loss of social skills. Furthermore, due to hallucination problems, it is critical to fact-check AI using reliable sources. While AI has the potential to assist students in reaching their full potential, it still has implications that could very easily cross an ethical line if not closely monitored.
STUDENT & TEACHER USE OF AI AT MSJ Each of the 175 MSJ students surveyed were asked which AI tools they use, how frequently they use AI, the effect AI has on their study habits, and their opinions on the ethics of using AI. Of the students surveyed, 47.1% admitted to using AI at least a few times a week, 60% of which use the tool for homework assistance. The survey reveals how widespread AI has become, with the majority of surveyed students having compromised their academic integrity in this manner. “I think AI has decreased my ability to critically think but now that I have no critical thinking skills, I have to keep using AI for critical thinking assignments,” one student said. However, justifications can be made that many MSJ students seem to agree with. “A core issue at MSJ is teachers assigning busy work that does not help with learning whatsoever. For these kinds of assignments, AI is incredibly helpful to complete [these assignments] quickly and make time for more important pursuits,” another survey respondent said. However, AI hasn’t just infiltrated students’ academic landscape, but also teachers’. In a 2024 Center for Democracy & Technology report, about 83% of public K-12 teachers admitted to using AI in 2024, a 32% point increase from last school year. This can be explained by the adaptive nature of AI programs that help teachers align students with their respective learning styles rather than putting all students within one classroom and one style. Even some MSJ educators have embraced the emergence of AI. “It [AI] has been really useful to write wrong answers when I’m making up tests. I know what the question should be; I know what the right answer should be, but trying to come up with feasible wrong answers? That’s hard,” AP Psychology Teacher and Yearbook Adviser Rachel Tevlin said. Teachers within MSJ have even begun implementing AI in classrooms, but with due caution. “I think that it is a reflection of the reality that students are going to walk into, that AI does exist in the world, and that when they are doing a job, they can use it as a way to help support whatever their end product,” Social Studies Teacher Keith Kottenbach said. This semester, Kottenbach has decided to make an extreme change in his grading procedure, using ChatGPT to grade his AP World History students’ written tests. He emphasized using only state-of-the-art models and spending hours crafting prompts for accurate grading. He said AI has allowed him to give better feedback, reduce return times, and make grading fair. Yet, the contentious nature of corrupting the powers of AI are still evident at MSJ, with some teachers feeling the adverse effects of AI on student work. English teachers have shown a noticeable movement towards handwritten, in-class essays. “That really cuts out the process of editing … It’s the editing process that puts those words in a more understandable, enlightening manner, which develops critical thinking. So if you’re cognitively offloading that aspect of the assignment [to AI], you’re really offloading your entire thinking process,” English Teacher Brian Rath said.
voices “[AI] is an advertisement, which is getting to a market that usually isn’t accessible, which is education and teachers. If you can get teachers to adopt AI, you can create consumers of AI that have become reliant on it at a young age, using it as a crutch.” — AP English Literature and Composition Teacher Brian Rath “I think it [AI] is a dichotomy. I think that it both improves learning and limits it ... One of the things I’ve seen is a lot of students when they don’t know something, they’ll ask ChatGPT ... On the other hand, sometimes teachers do not explain things well — AP Psychology and Yearbook Teacher Rachel Tevlin
CONCLUSION While AI is already ubiquitous within the education industry, its influence is projected to increase rapidly in the coming years. According to AIPRM, the market value for AI in education was $2.5 billion in 2022, and in the past three years, it has increased to $6 billion, with models predicting it will reach $88.2 billion by 2032. The rapidly growing market for AI means it will only become more relevant as time passes, making it more important to understand the benefits and drawbacks to students and teachers using AI. As the Internet becomes increasingly saturated with misinformation, students should remember that online sources always have possible biases, so it is essential to confirm sources when researching AI. Ultimately, students should be suspicious of the creeping influence of AI, keeping in mind both its benefits and the negative effects that using these programs could have. GRAPHICS BY NEWS EDITOR SHUHAN JIN
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