D26 doesn’t use AI at all. She will sometimes look stuff up on Google, but doesn’t use the Google AI response that shows up at the top of the screen.
Sometimes AI is wrong.
AND colleges everywhere have AI detection software that they use when students hand in assignments. Students should be very careful so they don’t get accused of academic cheating…that sort of thing goes on your academic record and in some professions, it can be a death knell for getting a job.
I find this really worrisome. I think there was recently a NY Times article saying that people’s brains really are turning to mush with AI.
My kids don’t use it at all, as far as I know. D22 is deeply concerned about the environment and how much water and energy we use to run AI, so she eschews it out of principle.
D26 used it for the first time this year while making test corrections in AP Physics – the students were given permission to check their answers with classmates, and she couldn’t get in touch with her partner, so she checked her work with AI. I felt a little weird about it and suggested she not do it again. (She did end up with an A in the class and a 5 on the AP exam, so I feel confident that she learned the material.)
I don’t know if S25 has played with it, but I don’t think so – he struggles with academics, and he often shows me his assignments. They clearly have not been done using AI, lol.
I know schools are changing up assignments to make AI harder to use – the summer AP Lit homework my D26 has, for instance, is nearly impossible to do using AI. She has to write directly in the book, circle and underline and highlight, keep a list of characters on the front inside cover, write chapter summaries in the book, etc. And then the five short-answer questions per book are things she has to pull from her own experience, so again, something AI wouldn’t be able to answer.
Yes, my D hates that Google AI response. She says, “I always scroll down really fast while that thing is loading, because it’s so often wrong that I don’t want to encourage myself to even read it.”
Pretty sure my D26 doesn’t use AI at all either.
Another weird AI anecdote that D related to me:
A student in her program is taking an online AP class this summer, and sometimes works on this class during lunchtime and breaks. However, instead of actually trying to learn the material, the student just keeps an AI window open at all times and copy pastes things into it to get answers to things. But apparently the tests for this class don’t allow you to open an AI window on your laptop (I am not sure how these things work). So for the tests, the student says that they use AI on a 2nd laptop.
The student says they don’t care about learning the material in the class, it is just to “boost their weighted GPA.” D said the person seemed almost giddy about how they were cheating the system without actually learning things. She wondered if this is some kind of superficial bravado, maybe the student thinks it’s cool to show off their disregard for learning the material, but in private maybe they are studying?
D says, “I am glad I’m not applying to the colleges these students want to attend.”
C26 hates AI, kind of ideologically lol (as in: it’s a thief of ideas and undermines real artists, + the resources issue). But the engineering program she will do has a module dealing with how to use it in art and music, so may change her mind on that. She would not use it for something she’s supposed to know.
From my own experience using it (just from the AI summary on Google ) I know it’s not always accurate so I would be hesitant to use it for anything important, or at least not without checking the links it uses for its conclusions.
Oh… C26’s junior year English was like this … I just realized this could be the reason.
That’s just crazy. Especially if it’s subjects they’ll be expected to understand at college.
Well, this student clearly isn’t planning to take the actual AP exam, so if they need this subject, they’ll have to repeat it in college anyway. D hopes that they learn some actual study skills between now and then.
My D26 has eschewed using genAI, but she also notes that some of her classmates DO use it regularly and not always for sanctioned uses. I’ve actually discussed with her when she should use it. It’s a modern tool that’s not going away, so understanding what it can and should be used for is useful, I think. I’ve talked about her using it as a thought partner to help her think through ideas and challenge what she might think. Then looking at the chatbots arguments and fighting back - so sort of like a thought sparring partner. It’s not perfect for this (it gets a lot of stuff wrong), but I think that’s an opportunity to do your own fact checking to help learn something more deeply.
All this said, she’d rather have that type of thought discussion with a human, which is absolutely fine. But I do tell her that I think there’s a place for AI, and it’ll be up to all of us to figure that out, so we should know what it really does and how it works.
Last bit about this is that it HAS made her more interested in linear algebra, so she’s thinking of how she might take a class in it at some point.
Yes, that’s why I brought it up. I don’t think we should be using it for everything, but I expect there are positive uses that don’t turn us to mush? Thanks for your example!
A student in D24’s 1st semester chemistry class this past school year did that very thing on the in-class computer-based chemistry exams, was caught cheating, and got in huge trouble.
The student in your kid’s class who’s doing that is being super dumb. That’s going to bite them in the butt later on.
Or maybe they’ll learn the hard way 
That’s concerning. I don’t think mine is using it much, though she does on occasion. When she does share something with me that she got from AI, she always starts with the caveat “Chat is where I got this, so who knows but….” And she is adamant about not using AI at all for essay writing.
Interestingly, my company is leaning heavy into AI, and I definitely do see some of the benefits. Copilot takes great meeting minutes! And it can be a great place to start research as long as human critical thinking skills are still part of the process. Great for analyzing data….
So I think there is a space for AI, and our kids are absolutely going to need to interact with/utilize it to be successful (depending on what industry they are going into). Learning appropriate use will be key.
I too worry about society as a whole becoming lazy and dumb as a result of it though!
Same here for my D26. Her high school does not grade inflate at all so I always worry that she will compare poorly among the pool of applicants. Her high school also does not report unweighted GPA, but I have calculated it myself and it is lower than where it should be. So we are spending $$ on a summer SAT prep course, hoping to get her scores high enough to make her more competitive for the target/reach schools on her list. Fortunately, she has two solid safety schools (including one “sure bet” school) that she likes in case that doesn’t work out 
We are using it selectively for work too. There are definitely useful applications, from data gathering to editing. (As an economist, I’m not sure I’d trust it to actually analyze data properly…at least to my standards, haha)
At my workplace, they recently rolled out an internal AI system and a lot of people have been using it to produce meeting minutes based on meeting transcription data.
BUT…
The minutes produced are way too high level. Not specific enough. Regularly leaves out critical details that are important & relevant to whatever the subject is that was discussed. And doesn’t include specific enough action items.
It drives me bananas. So I don’t use it for my own meetings. And for other people’s meetings where I know they rely entirely on the AI-produced minutes, I take my own meeting notes because those end up to be much more useful.
My D22 is at her summer internship (in publishing for a consulting firm) and she is researching how to create useful AI agents for repetitive tasks that the team regularly completes. Things like summarizing research or speeches, suggesting subject lines for marketing emails, etc. As a writer, she finds that the agents are perhaps 50 percent useful, and sometimes it takes her as long to train the agent as it does to simply do the task herself. But she is learning quite a bit on the topic, and I think it’s important to experiment but ultimately think for yourself about how to apply it usefully in your context.
Whether anyone likes it or not, knowing how to use AI effectively will be part of our jobs in many cases. AI won’t take our kids’ jobs—the people who know how to use AI will.
ETA: I do take issue with AI replacing learning and kids who use it take shortcuts are likely to find out the hard way later that their knowledge is lacking… but I don’t necessarily think all usage is bad.
Yes, and one thing we have learnt with AI that to use it effectively, you really need to know how to word the prompt. You can get really useful stuff or nonsense by asking (what you think is) the same question in a different way.
Mine is a luddite. Does not use AI or Chat GPT at all. I believe she should at least learn to use it as a tool so that she can navigate the real world when she’s done with school. She refuses.
My husband uses a commercial AI software for scheduling. He says it’s helpful.