Dealing with AI at Lehman: AI’s impact on the educational system

By Brian Cortes

On November 30th, 2022, ChatGPT was released to the public, marking a significant milestone in the use of artificial intelligence. Since then, its rapid integration into both educational and professional environments has raised important questions about the role of AI in the future of learning. At Lehman College, students and professors alike have experienced firsthand the effects of AI on their daily routines, shaping differing opinions on how it should be used and what its implications could be for students' career paths. 

One such student is Ertis Pashako, a Lehman undergraduate majoring in Film and TV Studies with a concentration in TV. As both a student and freelance content creator, Ertis has witnessed how AI tools have significantly transformed his academic experience as well as his creative endeavors. Reflecting on this change, he observes, “A lot of apps started coming out for photographers where you can fix photos. Just swipe to go to Photoshop and zoom in. You don't fix it. Now you just have a regular app that you download, and you just transfer your photo over, and basically swipe it, and it fixes everything for you. And then stuff like ChatGPT came out, so everybody in school started using it to write their papers.” 

Above, this shift in workflow, from hands-on creative efforts to AI-driven automation, has led Ertis to a broader reflection on the pros and cons of AI in education. On one hand, AI provides powerful tools that can streamline the creative process, helping content creators and editors enhance their work more efficiently. On the other hand, the ease of access to such tools can inadvertently encourage students to cut corners, altering their mindset toward the effort they put into their work. Ertis notes, "I thought of many things. First, this is gonna help editors—once programs or apps get good at it—where you can just upload all your footage, and it does the editing for you, kind of mimicking your style of editing. So, this is gonna be great for content creators. Then there's the negative side, where people use it to cheat, and it makes people lazy. They’re not doing their own work, their own research. They're just typing stuff and getting automated answers, then copying and pasting." 

In the sky, as AI continues to weave itself into both the academic and personal lives of students, questions arise about the role educational institutions should play in this evolving landscape. Ertis advocates for colleges to incorporate AI into the curriculum—not as a substitute for personal effort, but as a tool to complement students’ learning. He emphasizes that while AI is relatively new, its influence will only grow, and schools need to stay ahead by educating students on how to use AI responsibly. “Maybe incorporate a little AI into what we're learning, teach us more about it. It's something very new that even schools and professors haven't picked up. Two years ago, there were few things like ChatGPT. So it had a bad reputation coming in. People were cheating and basically writing their papers, and professors, they didn't know at the time,” Ertis comments. He envisions a future where students learn how to use AI as an aid to their projects, rather than letting AI take control of their creative processes. 

However, students are not the only ones grappling with the ethical and practical implications of AI. Professors, too, are reflecting on how AI is impacting the educational system. Professor Margot Mifflin, who teaches courses on beauty pageants, national identity, and the publishing industry at Lehman, has seen AI affect student writing in real time. She recalls noticing the use of AI-generated work as early as the fall of 2022, pointing out how it often manifested in disjointed and erratic sentence structures that were noticeably different from typical student writing. “I saw it in the fall of last year, and it's sort of easy to detect, or it was then, because it scrambles sentences, and so, you know, a student might be writing and, suddenly there's a lesson on another topic, there's no flow in a way that I've never seen in student writing,” she explains.

For Mifflin, the issue extends beyond just catching AI-generated work; it’s about ensuring that students are developing their own writing skills. She highlights the importance of writing as a fundamental form of self-expression that is essential in both personal and professional contexts. “I think it's going to be harder for students who think they can rely on it. There's just so many parts of life where you have to be able to write, even if you're not an English major. Learning to write is learning to express yourself, and learning to express yourself is such an important part of our world in terms of connecting with other people and understanding them, and helping them understand us. So doing that yourself is pretty crucial for any person,” she adds. 

This concern is not just theoretical. Mifflin shares a personal anecdote in which her book, The Blue Tattoo, was used without her permission to train AI, raising ethical questions about the use of copyrighted work in AI training. "It was kind of jarring to discover that the text was used to feed the AI, and all the tropes and expressions and sentence structures were replicated so it could be reused and regurgitated when people want to compose something," she recounts. This raises broader concerns about the ethical use of AI, especially as more creative and academic content is fed into these systems, often without the original creators’ consent. 

In light of these developments, Mifflin advises students to resist the temptation to rely on AI for their academic work, urging them to reach out to professors for support if they feel uncertain about their skills. “I would say, try to resist the urge to use it. Because it's important for you to develop writing skills of your own. And if you feel the urge to use it because of pressure, like work pressure or insecurity about your writing skills, talk to your professor before you resort to using it. Find out how you can feel better about your own writing without using a crutch,” she advises. 

Ultimately, the debate surrounding AI in education is far from settled. As AI software becomes more advanced and harder to detect, schools will need to adapt continuously, finding ways to address the changing dynamics between students and AI. The discussion extends beyond just academic settings, as the same students who experiment with AI in school will likely encounter it in various professional fields, from literature and entertainment to STEM disciplines. 

Above all, the challenge for both students and educators will be to strike a balance between using AI as a helpful tool and maintaining the integrity of individual skills and creativity. As technology continues to evolve, the conversation surrounding AI will also need to expand, taking into account the long-term implications of its use. In the end, the key lies in learning how to use AI effectively—without letting it undermine the essential human effort and innovation that education is meant to foster.