There is a news report here of a professor who exposed artificial intelligence (AI) cheating with 32 out of his 35 students failing because they used AI to cheat.

“In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the Industrial Revolution, but knowing how many students now rely solely on artificial intelligence for their answers, he secretly embedded instructions telling the AI to include information about Madagascar in a way that makes no sense.

Being written in white text meant the instructions were invisible. Sure enough, 32 out of the 35 students across two classes simply copied the question, pasted it into a chatbot, then copy and pasted its output into the answer window.“

There are ramifications with young people using technology:

1. As the younger generation uses AI instead of doing the work and research themselves, they will inevitably “dumb down” as they become more and more dependent upon AI.
2. AI users will potentially find themselves losing the ability altogether to think for themselves.
3. Skills can atrophy or disappear altogether or are never cultivated. For example; many kids cannot read an analog clock/watch because of their phone or digital watch; few young people can land-navigate with a map and compass because of GPS; many young people cannot perform manual mathematic calculations with paper and pencil because of calculators, etc. A young person who is a gifted artist will atrophy their gift if they lazily use AI to produce beautiful images instead of sharpening their gift.
4. AI algorithms can potentially be manipulated to indoctrinate its users.

AI can have enormously productive uses. But its use requires great discernment and responsibility – attributes still forming in young people who are not yet mature. The more powerful something is, the greater the potential for catastrophe when misused. In the NLT Ecclesiastes 9:18 instructs us, “Better to have wisdom than weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy much that is good,” revealing that great power results in devastating destruction when misused.