Is it bad to use Ai for study purposes?

[skeet5]

Hi, is it really that bad to use ai (I use Gemini) for study purposes? I use it to understand a topic, to summarise text I am trying to understand and learn, sometimes to explain the topic I am studying or convert the text it into simpler sentences. I know Ai is bad and I want to stop using it but I just keep coming back to the ai because it helps me sometimes and it is saving me a lot of time. Please can you make me understand why should I or shouldn't use ai for study purposes? Thank you

but al eg grok can scan over 30 sites and pull all the necessary data to give a good foundation in seconds / minutes. reading over 30 websites can take over an hour, etc

if im learning eg how to write an essay or the history of closed cities in the Ussr etc then it helps match information and sources to learn the topics better

reading over 30 websites can take over an hour, etc

But that's part of the learning process - reading and assimilating and assessing information. That's what 'learning how to write an essay' is.

The essay writing skills I was taught by my A Level History teacher have been useful to me throughout my life. He'd have had his red pen all over an essay written using AI.

al eg grok can scan over 30 sites and pull all the necessary data to give a good foundation in seconds / minutes

And you have NO IDEA whether it's accurate. And you have not developed your intellectual skills at all.

Whereas if you've read an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal, with footnotes and bibliography, you know where the information came from, and can follow it up if you want to. And you can follow the author's argument through the article.

AI is really good for practising language orals if no one in your home speaks the language.

fair points but id use ai first then id use the journals next based on the ai foundations as a guide point

I work in this area in a university, and it's a complex question - and answer.

I don't disagree with the posters who point out the flaws of this approach (the hallucinations, the inaccurate summaries, and the loss of independent thinking and critical learning); however, I find using AI judiciously can be helpful as a tool to those with certain additional learning challenges or language difficulties.

Teaching students to evaluate different tools, to write effective prompts and to balance the use of this tool with other research tools, and direct human supports like tutors, librarians and peer students, is important and what universities are trying to do at present.

thats the thing in the information age, you need tools like grok, chatgpt etc to be able to at least provide a foundation for subjects eg i say to grok research eg soviet closed cities during the cold war era and then make a list of suitable essay titles to study them further , then using each title it creates i then ask chatgpt to write an essay based on that essay title, so then i have eg 10 essays on soviet closed cities, then i can use academic journals or history books etc to learn the subjects further

in many ways ai is no different than the days of wikipedia,

Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, a big percentage of students are using it to replace learning and/or critical thinking rather than to enhance learning.

I use GenAI but I am not using it instead of critical thinking.

And there are many very good reasons why we always told students not to use Widipedia as a source.

If you are using it as described, you are missing out on some very important learning steps. As an example, being able to critique and determine importance of different elements of a topic, or assessing the validity and determining the weight to ascribe to different sources.

thats a fair point but then i figured once id read the ai essays then begin with the journals / books then they would either confirm the essays points or not etc ?

And what about all the points you haven't considered because AI didn't include them?

My advice would be to get on to Google Scholar and search on there. If an article looks interesting, read the abstract. If it still looks relevant, read the conclusion. That will help you weed out the irrelevant stuff.

Yes, it's bad.

When you say:
I use it to understand a topic, to summarise text I am trying to understand and learn, sometimes to explain the topic I am studying or convert the text it into simpler sentences.

You're giving away learning opportunities for deeper understanding of difficult material to machine-generated summaries & simplifications. Learning is hard & takes time. You're looking for shortcuts, but you're just short-changing yourself.

You're wasting opportunities to develop your brain - the brain that has emerged from millions of years of evolution to make humans a unique species, in that we can reason & communicate and LEARN.

because there is always bias weather is academic journals, or professors books etc they all have an angle,

the reason and theory i trust the ai for guide points is because it in theroy focuses on exactly what i want and guides me towards it with no bias

i hear you and great points but the learning comes after ai has given me the foundations of the subject similar to those books like forensics for dummies to me ai is like that then i use more advanced texts and books to do the learning etc

Surely the skill is using ChatGPT as part of any other research. It's no different to asking Google or trying to find a YouTube video.

You ask it something, you then assess what it says and compare this to all the other research sources.

thats basically how ive been using it, i never trust it, and i run between grok and chatgpt first to give me a grounding then use wikipedia and then go from there to the books

It's a tool, and a starting point. And it offers the scope for scaffolded learning according to existing student ability, eg. if they can develop a conversational discussion to test and challenge their own thoughts.

There are plenty of students who are not grasping content in lectures, who then go home and work it out through summarising, simplifying, examples and expansion work with AI. They get themselves to a position of understanding and advancement through judicious use. And yes of course it does have to be judicious, everyone knows AI has the potential to confidently give wrong answers, so it's a process of double checking, finding original and reputable sources after using it as an initial brainstorming tool perhaps.

It certainly has a place, and as we are preparing students for a world where AI will be increasingly utilised, we have a responsibility to prepare students for that future. The ones who don't use it appropriately will be out-competed in the workplace by those that do.

But if course it also goes without saying it should not be used to write essays wholesale or complete assessments, and universities will have to move with the times to establish integrity of qualifications and make use of more oral exams etc to truly establish students understanding.

exactly this,

That's total utter rubbish.

Do you know how these AI apps work? They're not magic, nor are they sentient. The AI apps you use scrape LLMs - large language models - which are those books and articles written by professors about whom you are so contemptuous.

AI replicates - and often accentuates - the biases and prejudices which are inherent in being human. Everybody has a point of view. It's not "biased" unless there is no rational argument or valid evidence to support it (pretty much your point of view about using AI instead of, I don't know, reading books and essays - you might learn to spell and punctuate for a start).

In order to support a point of view, an idea, yes, even a 'bias' you need to produce a rational, logical argument, based on valid evidence.

And this is a HUMAN activity, not one to cast off onto insentient AI. And AI "hallucinates" - it gets stuff really really wrong.

fair points on all points but when i specifically ask it to give eg the history of closed cities in the ussr because it can research eg over 50 sites any bia's would be diluted to the point where they have little effect on the overall history of the closed cities etc

It's very different to using google in the sense that when you use google you will, hopefully, be using critical thinking skills to assess and evaluate the quality of what you find. You will, hopefully, be able to differentiate between a good source and a bad source.

I despair. You obviously have no idea how genAI works. You don't appear to understand the peer review process for academic journals either or, presumably how to differentiate between high quality and poor quality journals.

ah the holy grail of peer review journals, those who are immune from any influence ? tell me im wrong

Wikipedia is not a reliable source either.

true but it does give a good source list on most articles