Brooklyn Coyle
Generative AI prevents students from making the most of their education by expressing ideas unrepresentative of their knowledge and understanding.
Editorials represent the viewpoint of the current La Voz editorial board.
AI is being integrated into our daily lives as technology advances. Its ability to streamline menial tasks is one of the many qualities that draws people to it.
With the ease of access and effective problem solving, students have been using AI for their assignments. A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study from 2023 reported that 27% of students and 9% of instructors use generative AI tools regularly.
The issue isn’t with the use of AI itself, but the uncontrolled use of it. De Anza College enables AI use through its relaxed and outdated policy, which lets students use it for academics as long as their professors allow it and their use aligns with the district’s Standards of Student Conduct.
De Anza’s Committee On Online Learning brought its recommendation to update the current policy to explicitly name AI to the Academic Senate on March 17. The body voted to include, “when students use AI, the work submitted represents the student’s knowledge and skills.”
There are various uses for AI as a tool, such as brainstorming, outlining, crunching numbers or finding trends.
Students are subject to “discipline” for “cheating and plagiarism,” and AI companies such as OpenAI face accusations of theft because generative AI learns from original work.
Students are using AI as an academically dishonest shortcut. Some do their entire assignments using programs like ChatGPT, then restructure the output to evade AI detection programs. This puts their degrees, grants, academic future and potentially their chances of employment at risk for short-term gain.
This issue even permeates campus politics, with GPTZero flagging 13 DASG chair candidates for using AI to generate their campaign statements, which was explicitly banned in the DASG elections code, but the Administration Committee did not enforce this ban.
Before accessing ChatGPT or other large language models, students should go through all the other options at their disposal. There is an abundance of databases through the De Anza library, and brainstorming with peers can offer deeper insight than any search engine.
When beginning a project, seeking inspiration from others is acceptable as long as it is not plagiarizing.
If students choose AI as a resource, the editorial board advises to use it as a tool and an assistant for learning, not as a substitute for original work. Overreliance on AI can prevent pupils from genuinely learning and can lead to academic consequences, such as failing a class, probation or even expulsion if caught.
There is no point in attending school if AI is learning the material, not you.
While students bear the responsibility for using AI, faculty also play a role in redesigning their courses. Instead of relying on traditional assignments that are vulnerable to AI, professors should explore AI-resistant assignments like in-class writing assignments and quizzes.
De Anza should offer free mini-courses to teach students how to use AI in a healthy way — as a tool that enhances the learning experience instead of a shortcut for completing their assignments. These types of courses would be crucial in helping students maintain their academic integrity while getting the most out of their education.
No matter how powerful a machine is, it is no match for the human brain. While AI is a powerful learning tool for outlining and researching, it does not have a voice of its own — a quality only humanity possesses.
As human voices grow muffled over the sounds of the keyboard, it is now more important than ever to use our unique attributes to advocate or express our opinions before we lose our capacity to do so.