Summary: Artificial intelligence is creating a major fork in the road inside the classroom. The blunt question now confronting teachers, students, and parents alike is this: If a machine can do your homework, then what are you learning? This post breaks down how tools like ChatGPT are being used by students, the blurry lines between help and cheating, and what new rules need to be written—quickly—to keep education both honest and useful.
Usage is Widespread—and Growing Fast
Studies estimate that roughly 86% of students worldwide are already using AI on a regular basis. ChatGPT in particular has exploded in popularity, with consistent month-over-month growth in traffic since its release in late 2022. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. AI tools can instantly write essays, generate source citations, summarize long readings, or even knock out lines of code.
From the student’s point of view, it’s about speed and convenience. From a marketing perspective, the adoption curve mirrors every successful tech diffusion in the last 30 years. First curiosity, then utility, and now normalization.
But normalization doesn’t mean legitimacy. It raises the harder question:
Is It Learning or Is It Cheating?
That’s where things get muddy. The hosts of the story—Michael Calore, Lauren Goode, and Katie Drummond—each reflect on their past with classroom cheating. But this backdrop only makes the current issue starker: If a student uses ChatGPT to summarize a reading, is that unethical? If they use it to write the essay they were assigned, where’s the line?
Katie draws the first distinction: compiling research isn’t cheating. Submitting fully AI-generated answers is. Lauren backs that up, saying the core of this hinges on intent. If the student is bypassing the learning experience, avoiding struggle, and replacing effort with automation, then yes—it’s cheating.
Intent matters, not just output. This is consistent with how ethics is dealt with in law, business, and personal life. What was your goal?
Real Case, Real Consequences
To illustrate the stakes, they walk through a live example: A tech-savvy student built an AI-based tool specifically to cheat on his computer science assignments. He didn’t stop there—he even used the app’s output in job interviews for internships. The goal wasn’t to learn. It was to game the system.
The verdict from the discussion panel: crystal clear. That was cheating. Not borderline. Not clever. Cheating. And there’s a real-world cost. How will employers handle hires who can’t perform without a prompt box?
What About Other AI Tools?
Beyond ChatGPT, the student AI toolkit stretches further than many classrooms realize. There’s Studdy, an AI tutor designed for interactive question-answer flows. Then there’s Chegg, a premium service offering support on grammar, formatting, citations, and more. These tools don’t write essays—but they sure make them bulletproof.
Michael urges caution. If students outsource critical thinking, if they never fumble their way to a thesis statement or wrestle with code logic, they leave school with Google-fu and very little else. He proposes real changes: more in-person oral exams, discussion-based evaluations, and live problem-solving sessions. These force learning to occur where the AI can’t copy/paste its way in.
Do We Ban AI in Education?
Short answer: No.
Banning AI from classrooms would be like banning calculators in math or the internet in history class. It’s not morally wrong to leverage tools—it’s sloppy to rely on them blindly. So instead of blocking AI, schools need to evolve how they teach, how they test, and what they expect students to walk away with.
Here’s where everyone agrees: AI isn’t going anywhere. We need to stop thinking of it as the enemy and start teaching students how to use it responsibly. That means teaching AI ethics like we teach ethics in medicine or journalism. It means developing department-level guidelines that specify what’s allowed and what’s not for assignments. It means professors should rethink their prompts to reward thought, not automation.
What’s the Goal of School Anymore?
This entire conversation leads to the foundational question most people try to sidestep: What is the point of school?
If the goal is merely output—a graded paragraph, a coded solution, a 500-word essay—then AI is more efficient than humans will ever be. But if the goal is the growth that comes from struggling through those processes, then we can’t let machines hijack the learning path.
So the answer isn’t white or black. The answer is framing. Schools need to rework their expectations. Teach how AI can supplement thinking—not replace it. Show kids how to question the AI’s logic, not parrot it. And implement safeguards that hold them accountable for what they claim to know.
To the students: You’re not failing if you want an edge. Everyone does. But you’ll regret having no skills when the training wheels come off. To the educators: Don’t fight the last war. AI is already here. Train your students to navigate it—not hide from it.
Because education isn’t just about answers. It’s about who you become while looking for them.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Fotos (TLdmnQz4Pns)
