We live in a time where AI is right at our very fingertips, and it skews our view of AI from what is and isn’t allowed. When talking to people about AI most automatically go on to regard it as “bad” and, to be fair, I was one of these people. When drafting this article I took an “AI is bad” approach. I was frustrated at how hypocritical our school staff were to tell us students, “AI is bad, don’t use it!” while using it to not only create posters but to use AI to create assignments. Although my thoughts on hypocrisy haven’t changed much, my view on AI has.
AI is everywhere and while most think of ChatGPT and ClaudeAI that isn’t the only form of AI we use. For instincts Google translate and Google maps all use AI, and if you think you’re safe think again, Tiktok, Instagram, every Google search you do use artificial intelligence. We have a built-in AI (Siri, Apple AI assist/Gemini, Android AI assistants.) on our phones.
And yet AI has tons of uses that help improve our world, one being healthcare. According to the University of St. Augustine for Health and Sciences AI has been used to improve diagnosis as AI analyzes the patient’s symptoms and suggests a healthcare plan. Another way AI helps us is with data science like forecasting. According to the University of Chicago Institute for Climate & Sustainable Growth an AI powered weather forecasting model can generate weather forecasts for locations around the world up to two weeks in advance.
So AI is a good thing? Not quite. AI is a big producer of carbon emission as training it can produce up to 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which to compare that’s 300 flights back and forth from New York to San Francisco. And that’s not even getting into how thirsty artificial intelligence is for clean water, although earth is mostly water not all of our water is drinkable, with only 1.2 percent being clean drinkable water. AI data centers used up to 22.1 billion gallons of water in 2014 and training GPT-3 (open AI) uses up to 700,000 liters of water.
Most importantly, AI affects our low income communities, as most low income housing is made near power plants. AI data centers rely heavily on power plants, and these power plants make living conditions horrible as they pollute the air and cause respiratory infections.
But what does any of this have to do with Mission? We know AI isn’t the best, that’s why we’re told not to use it. Actually there’s no fooling anyone, look around! AI bear images are framed like they’re artwork that took days to make, the yearbook smoother with AI and AI typos, for example the miss spelling of security spelled out as “security” on page 22. Our classrooms aren’t even safe because it turns out a lot of teachers use AI.
Now not to bash our Mission teachers, but a lot of students have been going around mentioning their teachers’ usage of AI and I wanted to know for myself if this were true. Do our teachers use AI ? According to this survey I conducted 3 out of 21 responses (staff) say they use AI to make assignments and 9 out of 21 staff said they use AI to assist with school work. For example Ms. Lancaster showed me a website she and her sister made that uses AI to find different and diverse scientists.
This isn’t to bash our teachers and say “how dare you use AI you monster!” but to acknowledge it’s a bit hypocritical to hear “Don’t use AI.” and then have your assignment be made by ClaudeAI. I will say after reading your responses it did make me rethink my idea of AI and how it can be quite useful. As some teachers put it AI is here and it’s not going to magically disappear just cause we want it to.
AI is scary, but no matter how we look at it we’ll have to adapt and find a way to work with it. Now I’m not saying I support AI, absolutely not, but that we see how harmful it can be but at the same time how useful it can be. So instead of tearing each other down for using AI , we should work to make changes so that it isn’t as accessible and make laws that prevent AI from stealing artwork and jobs etc.
This leads me to my final thoughts. While making my survey, I asked teachers how they felt about the school’s use of AI, and while most focused on their students’ use of AI, others mentioned how they don’t care about the AI bear posters. Which was kinda the reason I wrote this article. As an artist myself, I hate these AI generated bears.
I found myself getting angry every time I had to walk to my journalism class and pass by framed up AI bears. Hearing how teachers don’t tend to care about it made me a bit sad and while I understand they are more focused on their students’ education. As a student myself, we should also care about our creativity, as our creativity matters. Instead of making AI generated posters to encourage our students to create. We have an art club for crying out loud!
Our Mission community is full of amazing and creative students who are great artists. I know we can make beautiful posters; that way we can feel more connected with our peers. AI is a lot of things, but AI is not a good artist.
