By Chen Ying (25A01C), Peh Zhi Ning (25A01B)
ChatGPT, Sora, Dall-E… Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has sprung up from the pavement of human innovation and spread its leaves far and wide through the world. In businesses, in schools, in social media, AI has made its mark on every facet of our lives. However, whether it will prove to be a herb or a weed, we have yet to find out.
While there has been much discourse about the advantages and disadvantages of AI, there is no denying that the development and diffusion of AI will continue to make its way through every industry, and everyone’s lives. No doubt, AI is something that we will need to learn how to work with, or we will be lost in the tide of time.
How many times have you used AI while doing your work? Perhaps you have keyed your GP essay question into ChatGPT, or maybe you have taken a sneaky shot of your Vectors homework for MathGPT (Don’t lie, I can see that little teal icon in your tabs).
If so, you are part of the majority! AI has also creeped its way into education—53% of students in British universities have used AI in their education.
This number seems to only be increasing, and highlights the growing trend of students utilising AI. Perhaps that is why AI detectors have joined plagiarism detectors in educators’ arsenal of tools, as students seek to abuse generative AI in their assignments and exams. While AI can indeed be useful, complete reliance on it can prove to be greatly detrimental to our education.
But what if we can use AI in school, for good?
However, it cannot be said that using AI in our education is inherently bad. Everything has its pros and cons, and generative AI is no different. While we should minimise our reliance on AI, there are still many benefits that AI can offer, especially when it comes to our education.
As such, with proper vigilance and due care, generative AI can really help us in our learning.
How We Can (Legally) Use AI in Our Studies
So, how exactly can we use generative AI in our studies without sacrificing one’s academic integrity? Here are some ideas to get you started!
- Using AI to Craft Revision Questions
AI functions by using algorithms and models to process and learn from data. It employs techniques like machine learning and deep learning to identify patterns, make predictions, and perform tasks. Training involves feeding data to the models, allowing them to improve accuracy and functionality over time.
This makes AI extremely useful for forming practice questions that test your knowledge, allowing us to revise through active learning instead of passive methods such as rote memorisation. You can think of this as flashcards, but instead of painstakingly making your own prompts, AI does it for you after reviewing all the data that it has analysed!
Testing out ChatGPT… 
To increase the quality of this mini test, you might also want to include in your prompt the sub-topics you want to revise, or perhaps the learning outcomes you are trying to achieve.
- AI can be your teacher!
Additionally, AI’s access to a wide range of topics allows it to efficiently break down complex concepts into bite-sized pieces for easier understanding. To achieve this, include keywords like “explain” and “break down” in your prompt.
A surprisingly accurate description.
Though perhaps, you might want to exclude the “like I am 5” part, as that tends to result in overly simplified answers—instead, specifying “high school level” results in the clearest responses!
- Saving time with AI
Given AI’s incredible processing speed and wide access to knowledge, it is also extremely proficient at creating content summaries/study guides to act as refreshers on your current knowledge before exams. By requesting for a study guide and inputting your tested topics, learning outcomes, as well as syllabus outline, ChatGPT is able to speedily and proficiently produce a content summary which can greatly increase the efficiency of your revision.
Conclusion
All in all, as AI becomes increasingly advanced, it is essential for us to grow and adapt with it, such that we can ultimately leverage it to learn better. Of course, ChatGPT is not entirely foolproof, so we recommend that you take whatever it produces with a pinch of salt and check any doubtful looking content against your given notes. Only by maintaining a healthy balance of our own revision and utilising AI can we then work smart, not hard.
P.S. One of the paragraphs was generated with ChatGPT ;) Comment down below which one you think it is!