by Lorinda K.F.Newton
Artificial Intelligence (AI) software applications are popping up like dandelions this spring. A few months ago, Notion, an app I use to organize my writing and to-do lists, offered its in-app AI. My web browser Brave now uses an AI “summarizer” at the top of a search list. A few weeks ago, Homezada, a home inventory app, announced its AI called Zada. Now, Grammarly, which I reviewed in February, announced its AI GrammarlyGo, which helps people improve their writing.
Capturing headlines is ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence application released by OpenAI in November 2022. Elon Musk and numerous tech leaders have called for a pause on AI development. Governments want to regulate this newest generation of AI due to criminal activity. Users have reported AI bots engaging in creepy interactions.
Some say AI may bring the end of the human race. John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview offer a biblical perspective on this issue.
Most of these issues are beyond the scope of this post. I will focus on the effects of AI bots on academics.
Educators decry the possible end of education as we know it as ChatGPT completes homework assignments for students. One survey showed 25 percent of K-12 teachers caught students cheating with ChatGPT, leading some school districts to ban the app on their computers. Others see it as a helpful tutor, such as Khan Academy and Duolingo.
How should homeschoolers respond to this new technology? Are AI apps useful tools or a threat to human innovation and academic excellence?
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
According to Brave AI’s summarizer
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision. It is an interdisciplinary science with multiple approaches and advancements in machine learning and deep learning are revolutionizing the tech industry.
Artificial intelligence allows machines to model, or even improve upon, the capabilities of the human mind. And from the development of self-driving cars to the proliferation of smart assistants like Siri and Alexa, AI is increasingly becoming part of everyday life — and an area companies across every industry are investing in.
As you can see, a certain level of AI has been available for a while. The above-referenced article (with video for audio learners) provides details on the different levels of AI and their uses and history.
What Is ChatGPT?
OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT, defines this AI as such:
We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT, which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.
It can perform specific tasks, such as researching a topic, solving math problems, or debugging software code. AI developers “train” this app as it draws information from the internet.
OpenAI lists ChatGPT’s limitations, admitting it makes mistakes and even supplies wrong and “nonsensical” answers.
AI: Good or Bad?
Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, offers this view on how Christians can respond. Tools are morally neutral. They only become good or bad by their use. For example, the Gutenberg printing press made the Bible accessible to the masses. The press, and its digital form, has also made false and evil material widely available.
The same is true with this new technology. For instance, ChatGPT can defend the pro-life position. However, it has also provided the woke definition of a woman. It has no ethical grounding. It is a machine.
Advantages of the Tool
It’s fast and friendly. Unlike a search engine that lists multiple pages you must skim through, ChatGPT writes a summary of what it finds. Thus the chatbot makes learning a topic quick and easy.
I found two homeschool parents who described their use of ChatGPT.
Dad “Micah” demonstrates on YouTube how he developed a 5th-grade math curriculum with ChatGPT, including a lesson schedule and quizzes with answer keys.
Homeschool blogger Xuan Klevecka lists several ways parents and students can use ChatGPT in her post “The Best Way to Use ChatGPT in Your Homeschool.”
To build tech literacy and critical skills, Xuan suggests having your kids ask ChatGPT a question, evaluate how well it responds, and compare its response to other sources. She gives this warning.
“However, it’s crucial that we keep in mind that all AI-powered tools are precisely that, tools. They are not a replacement for a human, and we should keep a vigilant eye out for inaccuracies and social biases when using them.”
Disadvantages
Weak Writing Style
Catherine Godlewsky, blogger and part-time teacher for Homeschool Connections, a Catholic online program, describes a series of lesson experiments she gave ChatGPT. Then she evaluated each.
- Experiment 1: Write three poems about spring.
- Experiment 2: Write essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
- Experiment 3: Write a paragraph in Spanish.
- Experiment 4: Write on Catholic apologetics.
- Experiment 5: Patterns in grammar and math. The AI performed well and gave explanations for each assignment.
The author includes copies of the AI-generated texts from each assignment. The essays lacked depth, tended to be repetitive, and did not include quotations.
Next, Godlewsky ran the Hamlet paragraph through Grammarly’s plagiarism checker. It found no plagiarism. Yet it found 12 writing issues! Grammarly found no problems with the Spanish or Catholic apologetics paragraphs.
Godlewsky concluded that ChatGPT is “another cool toy” that “does not to lead students into a world of wonder and beauty, nor inspire them to holiness.” Although this tool has generally alarmed academia, she added that home educators needn’t worry about their children cheating with it. Parents will recognize the difference between their children’s writing voice and a bot’s.
Authoritatively False Information
Even if your family chooses not to use AI apps, others are in producing various media with them.
Various news sources, such as The Washington Post, have pointed out that ChatGPT and its AI cousins can easily produce wrong answers. Moreover, people have also used AI apps to create fake videos, podcasts, and artwork. For example, see this AI-created Joe Rogan podcast.
Christian author Tom Gilson sees more evil in AI because it can easily deceive with deep fakes, leading to magnified distrust. See “Deceit, Distrust, Insanity: How AI (Artificial Intelligence) Guarantees It All.”
Our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood is growing more complex with AI-generated material. Therefore, you must coach your students to use a higher level of discernment to sort fact from fiction when researching online.
As a parent, you need to evaluate whether your students should access an AI bot. Furthermore, because AI is expanding into our daily lives, you must educate your children (and yourself) about this technology’s shortcomings and its effect on our lives and culture.
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Both of my children have completed high school, and so I’ve decided to stop blogging for Academy Northwest in June and allow someone who is actively homeschooling take my place. If you love to write and are passionate about homeschool and educational topics, please consider writing for this monthly blog. If you feel uncertain about your writing skills, I’m willing to coach you. Please contact Chay Bigger, Marketing and Programming Director, at chayb@academynorthwest.net if you are interested in this position. Please submit a writing sample.
Lorinda K. F. Newton homeschooled her children from 2004 to 2023, and her family joined Academy Northwest in 2014. Her family lives on beautiful Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington. She writes about faith, culture, and governing from a biblical worldview on Substack, where she also publishes the “Newton Library Update” about her home library. Her older posts can be found at Lorinda’s Ponderings. ©2023 by Lorinda K. F. Newton.
