How is AI impacting education?

When ChatGPT first burst onto the scene back in November 2022, users were blown away by the speed, overall accuracy, and general ‘humanness’ of its responses – particularly when compared with the chatbots that had been available up to that point. While reactions have been pretty polarised when it comes to the technology, with some heralding it as a revolutionary tool that could supercharge efficiency across society, and others worrying that it marked the beginning of a complete AI takeover.

Whether or not you’re on board with it, it’s hard to ignore the impact that tools like ChatGPT are having in one sphere in particular: education. Rather than needing to produce things like essays and research papers from scratch, the chatbot can provide students with valuable jumping-off points and resources, as well as distil important scientific or mathematical concepts into easier-to-grasp summaries.

However, it’s also become increasingly enticing for students to rely on the tech too heavily, using it to write full pieces of work instead of just as a research tool. In an interview in 2023, linguist and political scientist Noam Chomsky summarised: “I don’t think it has anything to do with education except undermining it. ChatGPT is basically high-tech plagiarism.” Indeed, a study conducted by Wiley found that over half of college students in North America said there was more cheating in 2024 than the year before – with students and teachers alike believing that cheating will continue to rise in the coming years because of the availability of AI.