I’ll start off bluntly. Artificial Intelligence is downright terrifying, and I’m confused as to why more alarming questions aren’t being asked about. 

Remember all those times when we feared that robots were going to take over at some point? Well, my friends, it appears that our suspicions for the future have quickly become our reality. AI has crept its way into our everyday lives. However, the public’s reactions are not as expected. 

For those who are oblivious, AI, in simple terms, can be described as the “science of making machines that can think like humans. It can do things that are considered ‘smart.’AI technology can process large amounts of data in ways, unlike humans. The goal for AI is to be able to do things such as recognize patterns, make decisions and judge like humans,” according to HCLTtech.

However, where others see AI as an innovative helping hand, I see it as a posed threat to both our creativity, as well as intelligence. 

Now, my concern here is not that technology will grow more advanced than humans, it is that we will become so reliant on it that our own wit will begin to fade.

AI is everywhere and we don’t realize it because we’re so invested in tech that the slightest change isn’t noticeable. For example, we ask things like Google Home to play music for us or our Amazon Alexa’s to set our morning alarms without even batting an eye.

As AI continues to grow in its power and ability, we, as a society, have become more and more dependent on it. This can be seen through the increasing number of users of ChatGPT.

ChatGPT acts as a chatbot, giving people the ability to ask questions, and in return it can formulate human-like responses to fit whatever formatting the user chooses. Its job isn’t limited, as it can assist in many tasks by constructing sophisticated written content such as emails, texts and, high school students’ favorite: homework assignments including essays.

Using the tech for school purposes weighs heavy on my mind, as it is the most problematic issue that has arisen. Here is where my problem lies.  

It’s no secret that the high school students of our generation use ChatGPT to their advantage as much as possible, using it for practically every assignment they’re presented with. However, despite cheating our way through now, we went long enough without it to give ourselves the opportunity to form our own intelligence before being corrupted by the machinery. That being said, the coming generations are doomed to suffer from a dehumanized education.

If children aren’t getting the necessary education they need and all of their knowledge isn’t truly their own because it’s derived from technology, they will begin to grow a loss of comprehension skills and will only continue to dumb down as the power of AI increases. Also, if young students are only immersing themselves in AI, how do we expect them to grow their adolescent minds without getting the hands-on educational experience that previous generations have?

It’s all part of a chain reaction. These same students that tried to take the easy way out of their school experience are going to grow to become the faces of the workforce. Lacking the proper indoctrination in their development years will leave them as incompetent workers, having a negative impact on our workforce.

I’m sure that everyone has seen the TikToks where AI will make an artist sing a song composed by another artist. If we have programming that does this, it takes away from authentically created human art. The value of music and art is that it was created to convey human emotion. Thus, relying on AI to create it takes away from originality. 

There will come a time where it will be too late and we will have grown deaf to real intelligence. 

So the real question here is: are we going to let AI take over our world, or are we going to take it back for ourselves?