Generative AI is becoming an increasingly prominent part of popular culture, and with its rise, many have been speculating about the effect this developing technology will have on the education system at Wayne State College.
Many people at WSC have mixed feelings for the accessibility of generative AI. Kristi Anderson, a technician in the IT department at WSC, said that AI can be beneficial in some aspects, but there are still drawbacks and progress to be made before it becomes truly reliable.
“It’s exciting on the technology side, to see how far it’s come, but there’s a lot more we all need to learn about AI and generative AI,” Anderson said.
One large concern the IT department has while handling this quickly-evolving technology is dealing with the scraping of student data and invasion of privacy.
“As NATS, and here at Wayne State College, we’re really concerned about how student information is being gathered and used,” Anderson said. “We are very protective of that.”
While student privacy and data breaches are concerns for the faculty at WSC, Anderson said that there could be benefits of using AI in education, mostly during the idea-gathering phase of a project.
“Students can use it to help brainstorm, come up with ideas,” Anderson said. “The big part, too, is, how do faculty know what is original thought and creativity, or what is a third party and outside source?”
While Anderson said citing sources and data breaches are the main concerns from the administration, students’ thoughts on the downsides of generative AI fall in different categories. Jason Olivares-Castillas, a sophomore computer information systems major with specializations in cybersecurity and networking, said he felt there were benefits and downsides to using generative AI in school.
“AI is both a good thing and a bad thing,” Olivares-Castillas said. “You can use generative AI to just start an idea and get it slightly more developed… on the other hand, some people are just really bad at wanting to do their own work now, because of that.”
Olivares-Castillas said his biggest concern when it comes to using AI is the misinformation that it can spread.
“AI has a lot of margin for error, or it’ll do stuff that makes no sense,” Olivares-Castillas said. “As someone in IT, you cannot afford for mistakes or anything.”
While the biggest concerns for students and faculty on the technical side were in the performance deficiencies present in generative AI, those in other departments had different concerns entirely. Alexandra Splittgerber, a senior studio arts major with a minor in graphic design, said she was firmly against use of generative AI in any situation because it discourages creativity.
“The majority of the visual arts students highly frown upon the use of AI in any step of creation,” Splittgerber said. “People who don’t consider themselves good at art may fall back on generative AI, but that rids them of the want to develop artistic skill.”
Another concern that Splittgerber mentioned was the rising prevalence of generative AI puts the careers of many visual artists at risk.
“Non-artists who want a specific piece of artwork done for them are now going to AI instead of hiring an artist,” Splittgerber said. “We need to support our local artists to grow a healthy art community, instead of quickly producing a soulless piece of art.”
Splittgerber’s next issue with the use of generative AI is that AI-generated images don’t have the same passion as art produced by humans.
“Art is something created by a human being. Art, no matter how bad, has soul. AI art, no matter how good, can never replicate that. Even if AI art becomes better than any human artist, it is utterly worthless,” Splittgerber said.
Chad Christensen, a professor of English at WSC and the managing editor of the WSC press, said that generative AI and how it will affect students is a big topic of conversation at WSC right now.
“In my department, we’ve had concerns. There’s a lot of different ways it can be used to help people teach and help people assess courses,” Christensen said. “Some, I think, are more frightened than others.”
Christensen said he had found generative AI to be a useful tool when used to help prepare lessons or organize thoughts.
“I think there’s some cool things for researching, but it’s not an end-all… you also have to be aware that some of the stuff is questionable,” Christensen said. “I use it to help with a lot of my notes and prep, to help organize it.”
Christensen said one of his concerns when it comes to using generative AI for school is that this technology is enabling the wider issue of plagiarism.
“Before, they kind of had to search around for it,” Christensen said. “This way, it’s faster, and it’s a little harder to detect. I think a majority of students still genuinely want to learn and do the right thing. That’s still the same, for the most part.”
Christensen said he had conflicting feelings on generative AI. He said he thought the technological advancement was interesting, but that there were also moral concerns that users should be aware of.
“I’m interested in AI… but I do understand the ethical issues. It’s scraping a lot of copyrighted work, which is questionable.”
Across several different departments at WSC, the general attitude toward the use of generative AI in education seems to be interest mixed with a heavy dose of caution. According to faculty and students, generative AI can be useful in the beginning stages of a project, but students should be wary of becoming over reliant on this technology, as it can spread information, promote plagiarism, and discourage real human creativity.
