AI: Cheating, or Just Another Tool in the Box?

 

As the new school term starts, the new university cycle begins, and my new learners get closer to their first session in counselling skills, I am preparing myself to deliver my final research presentation to colleagues at Adult Learning Wales.

This research has taken a year to conduct, but the subject has been on my mind for as long as AI has been so readily available to us all.

And by all, I mean pupils, students and learners of every age.

Because who wouldn’t be interested in a little cheating?

A little help from an invisible friend that can enhance your academic writing, help you focus your ideas, organise your thoughts, point out your errors and help you correct them?

But is this really cheating? Or is it simply the natural evolution of the tools we use to support human intelligence?

I wouldn’t think twice about using an electric screwdriver to help me hang a picture frame on my wall. In fact, it would seem rather ludicrous to insist on doing the job with the most basic tools available, or perhaps stones and brute force, simply to prove that I could. 

In much the same way, I don’t think I would now feel confident presenting an important piece of written work without first using the spell-checker on my computer.

In the olden days, as my teenagers like to call those dark and distant years of my youth, if you wanted your prose checked, you had to swallow your pride and ask someone who was better at spelling than you to read through your work.

That could lead to embarrassment and, sometimes, the uncomfortable feeling that because you couldn’t spell particularly well, perhaps you weren’t intelligent enough to have an opinion on philosophy, science, politics or anything else deemed sufficiently intellectual.

Of course, that was never true.

The question of spelling itself is interesting. So many of us now write with a spell-checker permanently running in the background. It corrects us automatically, often without us even noticing.

So, are we losing a skill?

Or are we simply using a tool?

Do I need to demonstrate that I can use a manual screwdriver before I am allowed to take credit for the picture I hung using an electric one?

And this brings me back to AI.

With AI becoming increasingly intertwined with the work students and learners produce and submit as their own, we need to ask a much more complicated question than simply: Should AI be allowed?

Perhaps the better question is: When does AI support learning, and when does it replace it?

As an educator of many years, I have always believed that a tool capable of improving learning can be a good thing. I would like to believe that using AI appropriately in the classroom could offer enormous benefits and genuinely enhance the learning experience of our students.

It can help someone organise a chaotic collection of thoughts. It can explain a difficult concept in simpler language. It can help a learner identify gaps in their understanding. It can give someone who lacks confidence a starting point.

But it can also do the thinking for them.

And that is where the distinction becomes important.

Understanding AI’s limitations, knowing when and how to use it, and being completely open about academic integrity are conversations that educators and learners need to have together.

Going back to my DIY analogy, there is little value in me bragging that I hung a picture using nothing but my bare hands. But equally, owning an electric drill does not suddenly make me a skilled carpenter.

For complete transparency, I am actually dreadful with a drill and generally hand it to my husband. Which perhaps proves my point: having access to a powerful tool does not automatically give you the skills to use it.

I still need to understand what I am doing.

I need to choose the right tool. I need to know how to use it. I need to recognise when I am about to make a mistake. And, ideally, I need enough knowledge to realise when the tool itself is not giving me the result I need before I destroy the wall in the process.

Perhaps AI literacy is not so different.

So, using AI as a tool?

That’s a yes from me.

But just like every other tool in my toolbox, knowing how to use it matters. Understanding its limitations matters. Recognising its dangers matters. And, above all, we should still be able to recognise the knowledge, thinking and skills of the person holding the tool.

Because education should never simply be about producing the perfect piece of work.

It should be about what we learned while producing it.