Bill White: A different perspective on artificial intelligence

I received wonderful responses to my columns this summer about Fenway Park, artificial intelligence and golf, so I thought I would share a small sampling today.

Artificial intelligence

We’ll start with the AI column, in which I admitted I’m glad I’ve retired from teaching because of the challenge posed by students using AI to do their writing assignments.

I got a really interesting response from a friend who has worked with educators and students as part of his cybersecurity business. He offered a perspective I hadn’t considered, writing in part:

“When I talk to school administrators about their biggest AI fears in education, they almost all start with student cheating. It’s a legitimate problem. They are very afraid that their kids cheat with AI and won’t learn the material.

“When I ask the students about their biggest AI fears in education, they say something completely different. They are afraid of being accused of cheating with AI. In fact, every student in my class had a horror story about how they innocently submitted a paper or an assignment and some random AI checker flagged it as fake, and they either got a zero or had to explain themselves to their angry teacher. Some of these students are deliberately adding typos and weird syntax into their assignments because the AI sniffers won’t pick it up as easily. The students told stories of arbitrary judgments by different teachers, multiple AI checking tools with inconsistent outcomes, and a lack of written appeals processes.