A New Age Question You Should Decide Yourself
Lily Dykstra (she/her) // Writing Contributor
Apsara Coeffic-Neou (she/her) // Contributing Visuals
AI (artificial intelligence) has been simmering in the background of our lives since ChatGPT was launched in 2022. Initially, students were warned about the consequences of using it in any capacity: not only would you receive an automatic fail, but it has dire environmental effects and inhibits our ability to critically think.
Schools and employers didn’t encourage its use because it was both plagiarising and cheating, the largest of infractions.
Before, you knew where everyone in the education and work landscape stood in the hierarchy of letter grades, status and social capital. Now, we can’t say anything for certain.
It’s difficult to know the right course of action when one of your professors says you’ll get an automatic zero for using AI in any capacity, while another encourages you to use it to understand problems. Already, students are struggling with conflicting viewpoints coming from authority. However, if you are against using AI, it’s easy to stay true to your morals and not use it for any class or personal work.
However, in recent years there have been more avenues to consider.
Recruiters and managers want new employees to be proficient with AI and be comfortable using it every day to assist with productivity.
It’s to the extent that some companies even list it as a requirement. Of course, there are also companies that refuse to integrate AI. So you shouldn’t become reliant on it, in case you land a job at an anti-AI company.
My parents had their entire adolescence to decide what they wanted to major in university. I was pressured to decide at 14 or I’d risk choosing a field that may become obsolete due to AI. In this increasingly fast-paced world, each generation of students have had to make life-altering decisions earlier in life, and it’s only been exacerbated by AI. The refusal to use AI—to stay true to your morals—could jeopardise your future, as well as surrendering. On top of that, entry-level jobs are slowly being offloaded to AI, effectively making it harder to even get a job in the first place. So what are students and entry-level workers supposed to do?
AI is still new, and no one can be certain what the right course of action is. What’s “right” is going to look different for everyone. But it comes down to staying true to your morals, despite those arguments that “it’s inevitable.”
Using your own brain and being reliant on yourself is always better than delegating to a person who isn’t even real.
There is much to consider regarding the usages of AI, and it varies between person and field.
I can’t make the choice for you, nor tell you what to do with your life, when I know nothing about your unique circumstances. I encourage you to decide for yourself what your stance is or I’d be enabling the same mental laziness Chat GPT has done for people. It’s important to stay informed about the adapting technology and be open to other human viewpoints. Take into consideration an example of how technology-use changes.
Much like AI, when self-checkouts first appeared onto the retail scene, it was predicted that they would make cashiers obsolete and cut back on labour costs. Companies quickly installed them, but now many are returning to primarily human cashiers, or ditching self-checkouts altogether.
They found that the change had increased theft, but also that many people refused to use the self-checkouts because they simply prefer interacting with other people. Self-checkouts reveal the value of speaking to a human as opposed to a screen. Emerging technology doesn’t erase human skills, and often, it can show us exactly why we should value those skills in the first place.