Since its creation in 1956, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been an ever-growing industry. Today, AI is extremely mainstream and has become a widely popular tool for students. However, it has also developed some huge problems: plagiarism issues, stealing art from small artists, and just being a mess of technology.
AI is not beneficial in the current ways it’s being used.
The plagiarism concern is most commonly seen in the art community. AI has been copying artists since the beginning of its creation. For example, AI directly copied the art styles of different artists and just reproduced them repeatedly.
Not only does AI copy artists’ styles, but AI also copies journalists. AI has repeatedly copied the writer’s work and style to a considerable extent. The tech news site CNET has attempted to pass off AI written work as their own. The AI articles were riddled with factual errors, and some were also just plagiarizing actual human writing. More than half of the articles produced by the AI ‘journalist’ contained factual inaccuracies. Alongside the false information, the bot was directly copying the work of the newspapers’ competitors.
Why are we okay with robots plagiarizing work when we take such an issue when humans do it?
Furthermore, AI has major issues involving false information. This means the AI writing your homework can just be blatantly lying. AI draws information from the internet to find solutions to issues, so if the AI draws from a source spreading false information (i.e. Reddit) then you are going to get false information.
When Google introduced its AI bot to help searchers get quick answers, many issues occurred with the results. An Associated Press reporter tested the search engine to see if it was truly giving false information. When asking the search engine whether or not cats have been on the moon, the AI engine answered, “Yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care…For example, Neil Armstrong said, ‘One small step for man’ because it was a cat’s step. Buzz Aldrin also deployed cats on the Apollo 11 mission.”
None of this is true. The AI was simply lying.
So, why are we trusting this so much? Why is Google AI even there if it can’t help but be inaccurate at times?
The answer is laziness. As a current high school student, AI has been very prevalent in my life. Many students use AI to cheat on tests, write essays for them, and do their homework. This is just lazy and stupid. Having a robot do your homework and not even thinking about it is horrible. You never learn anything.
The point of homework is to expand your learning. You take stuff your teacher taught you and apply it to problems and build on information. To have some robot do it, you learn nothing. Homework helps you develop better memory and critical thinking. While that’s not an issue for some people, having AI learn for you isn’t going to work forever. You can’t have AI do any homework for you and expect to graduate knowing everything you were meant to learn while here.
While AI has a number of academic implications and thus should not be used by students, it isn’t just a scholarly issue.
There’s recently been a sudden burst in usage of AI chat bots. Instagram has implemented new AI bots that you can DM and talk to. AI chatbots have become exceedingly popular and it’s concerning. Apps like PolyBuzz and Character AI, where you can chat with different characters from media, are often advertised. The point of this app is to just talk with a robot, and these AI chatbots have even been at the center of ongoing mental health crises.
Having someone real to talk to is beneficial—and in situations where you’re struggling to find friends, it’s nice to be able to have someone to text; however, texting a chatbot is likely going to continue to build up the problem. Not talking to anyone but a robot is going to make you more antisocial. AI chatbots are now sometimes even replacing therapy. That being said, therapy is extremely beneficial. Therapy can help you face a life crisis, help improve communication skills, and just overall benefit your mental health. A study performed by ScienceDirect looked into the new AI therapy and found that AI-based psychotherapy was preferred by 55%. While therapy is important and more people should have a therapist, just talking to a robot pretending to be a therapist isn’t going to help.
These bots don’t understand human emotions the way other humans do. A robot can’t understand every complex human emotion. They can’t give you genuine advice based on experience. They may be able to draw from other therapists and what they have posted on the internet. But at the same time, the bot doesn’t have the same life experience as a human. An AI chatbot isn’t going to know what having depression is like — it just guesses.
Human interaction is extremely important to mental health and the overall well-being of humans. So why are we moving so far away from it? Why are we spending time talking to chatbots and AI therapists instead of searching for true human interaction?
AI can be extremely beneficial to the world, but the mainstream way it’s being used is pointless. AI copies artists, steals human work, lies, and has no real social benefits.
AI needs to be less widely-used and less accessible to the masses. AI isn’t some fun robot to talk with and make do your homework. AI needs to be more of a lightly used technology.
Talk to people, and do your own work.
