A student's guide to using Artificial Intelligence:
Assigned to read 18 textbook pages! No thank you! The digital brain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now aid students in summarizing long texts, making study guides, practice quizzes, and writing outlines. While many schools have banned AI tools due to plagiarism concerns, students can still use these platforms responsibly to enhance learning and manage time more effectively. The average student spends 2.7 hours (University of San Diego) doing homework every night and AI might just be the cheat code to getting that time back.
As a senior in high school, I have found a cheat code for using artificial intelligence platforms to support my learning and help me save time. I am aware of the negative energy usage from data centers that use high electricity and water and environmental effects of using Artificial Intelligence platforms but I am careful not to overuse it when it supports me as a student.
Smart technologies like Chat GPT, Gauth AI, Thea, Quizlet, Save My GPA, Otter.ai, and others support students by condensing long documents, act as a brainstorming partner, notetaking support, language learning and proofreading.
The University of Illinois Urbana- Campaign states that AI’s immediate feedback helps students see strengths and weaknesses in their work.
My favorite newfound digital bestie is the free website thea.study, a platform unblocked on school devices that uses artificial intelligence to enhance learning and help students learn and absorb content– and there's no way to cheat! This handy-dandy digital brain will be designed to “take the content of a given course and turn it into ‘study kits’ including dynamic, adaptive, and personalized Socratic questioning,” states the Thea Study institution.
I often upload required articles or readings to Thea where it can summarize the article, create a study guide, make flashcards, and even quiz me with practice tests. This tool saves me countless hours and mental exhaustion of assigned reading because of its quickly generated study materials. As a student athlete, I have a lot on my plate and reading 18 pages is not my top pick.
Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) is another AI platform that has supported me in high school as a writer. I ask for prompts such as “create an essay outline for me about this prompt…”. ChatGPT has also helped me come up with fresh ideas to add to my essays. This chat box helps fuel my brainstorming by acting as a peer with a greater range of knowledge than myself. I have used ChatGPT to give me ideas of songs that relate to poems for an English comparison essay, asked for suggestions for developmentally appropriate activities for preschoolers, and even used its suggestions in finding some pretty great birthday gifts.
Science teacher and tennis coach Daniel Diaz is also an avid user of Chat GPT. He uses this platform to create lesson plans, brainstorm activities and create calendars for his units,
“When I was tasked with teaching G.E.O last year, I started by asking for a six week outline of the units I wanted to teach. From there I would ask for activity suggestions and change them to fit what I needed. Then I would say ‘okay, create me conclusion questions for that activity,’” Diaz explained.
As a teacher he finds that the platform allows him to ask different kinds of questions than Magic Classroom, the AI website designed for teachers and approved by the PRJUSD, while still giving him the support in lesson planning that he needs,
“I like that I can have ideas and I don’t have to do a lot of the legwork to flush it out and [Chapt GPT] can just do it for me. I can pick the parts that I like and then add my own things to what it gives me,” Diaz said.
ChatGPT also effectively motivates curious researchers by helping them save time and affirm the questions that they ask with immediate feedback. My digital friend may respond with, “Great Question!” or "Absolutely", making me feel recognized for the ideas I have. Additionally, offering additional resources or possible requests after the initial answer allows for more support. “Would you like me to make a high protein meal plan for you?” it may respond after being prompted to provide high protein breakfasts for athletes.
ChatGPT also effectively motivates curious researchers by helping them save time and affirm the questions that they ask with immediate feedback. My digital friend may respond with, “Great Question!” or "Absolutely", making me feel recognized for the ideas I have. Additionally, offering additional resources or possible requests after the initial answer allows for more support. “Would you like me to make a high protein meal plan for you?” it may respond after being prompted to provide high protein breakfasts for athletes.
AI Energy Usuage
With more than 378 million people using AI platforms per day, there is an increasing awareness that these systems help us out but do not support the environment with their water and energy consumption.
ChatGPT alone uses 85, 000 gallons of water per day to cool the physical servers used in the data centers. There is also a high demand for electricity to run these computers, increasing carbon emissions.
The amount of energy consumption and water usage also depends on the climate of the data center; warm and dry locations would need more water than cooler regions. Newer data centers are adopting a closed loop system that circulates cool water through hot servers and then to an external cooling tower to chill that water, allowing the water to be used multiple times (Environmental and Energy Study Institution).
AI opps argue that these systems do not support the environment and waste water. However, large AI using companies such as Microsoft and Google are actively lowering the cost of energy and investing in more efficient materials to lower their carbon footprint.
Diaz agrees that there is a significant environmental impact from these giant tech companies and their AI systems and their usage makes a greater impact on our ecosystems than our personal use.
“Even though my individual AI usage is negative, I don’t think it makes a huge difference in the grand scheme of all the big companies,” Diaz said.
From a student perspective, I believe that there are other ways we can create a healthy ecosystem and still use digital intelligence in order to improve our productivity and support our learning.