Those turning to ChatGPT aren’t lazy. My generation has been stranded in a rapidly changing and, since Covid, badly mishandled education system

Reading about the role of artificial intelligence in higher education, the landscape looks bleak. Students are cheating en masse in our assessments or open-book, online exams using AI tools, all the while making ourselves stupider. The next generation of graduates, apparently, are going to complete their degrees without ever having so much as approached a critical thought.

Given that my course is examined entirely through closed-book exams, and I worry about the vast amounts of water and energy needed to power AI datacentres, I generally avoid using ChatGPT. But in my experience, students see it as a broadly acceptable tool in the learning process. Although debates about AI tend to focus on “cheating”, it is increasingly being used to assist with research, or to help structure essays.

Elsie McDowell is a student. She was the 2023 winner of the Hugo Young award, 16-18 age category

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