The pros of artificial intelligence

As the technology industry advances towards artificial intelligence (AI) integration, many people, including myself, share concerns about its impact on humanity. Trinity University recently invested in the idea of AI, now allowing all students and faculty access to Gemini and Copilot (although professors can still decide whether students are allowed to use it for their course).

After some time searching through syllabi for the AI policies of each of my classes, I decided to see for myself whether AI was worth it. As a disclaimer, none of my assignments were completed with AI assistance. Instead, I opted to use it for discussion readings and recreational time. During my experiment, I found that there were some benefits to using AI, and also some downsides.

First, I can hardly sit still and focus on reading a book. My attention to the words drifts as soon as my eyes are able to look at something else, and without the help of an auditory aid, focus becomes difficult. To help, I utilized the AI text-to-speech feature in Microsoft Edge’s PDF reader, which offers dozens of natural-sounding voices in various languages. The natural voices of the bots helped me keep my attention on the text, which may be useful to other struggling students with dyslexia or ADHD.