Debate: Is it ethical to use AI to write school essays or is that just cheating with extra steps?

My nephew asked me to help him with a history paper last week, and he showed me how he fed the prompt into ChatGPT to get a first draft. I told him that felt wrong, but he argued everyone at his high school does it now and teachers haven't said a word. On one hand, it's basically outsourcing thinking, but on the other hand, isn't it just a faster way to organize ideas like using spellcheck? I can't figure out where the line is anymore, so which side do you land on?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowan_butler9326d ago

That "polish the wording" thing is exactly what I told my nephew too. I made him do the research and write his own rough draft first, then let him use ChatGPT to clean up clunky sentences but only if he could explain why the AI changed something.

barbara_taylor8326d ago

The real trick is showing him how to use it as a tool instead of a crutch. My niece tried the same thing and I told her she could feed her own outline into ChatGPT to help polish the wording but only after she wrote the outline herself from actual research. She still learned the material because she had to fact check everything the AI spit out. The kids who just copy paste end up blank during class discussions and that backfires hard. Teachers absolutely notice when a paper sounds way above a kid's normal vocabulary level too.