The once “far away” fantasy of “robots taking over the world” may be even closer to us than you think.

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is new technology that can create content from any prompt or question from a machine or a robots’ doing. Recently, AI technology is rapidly becoming more and more advanced and utilized in everyday life.

One of the most viral uses of AI technology recently is the production of the song “Heart on My Sleeve,” a collaborative song sung by Drake and The Weekend…allegedly. This fake AI song made by a so-called “ghostwriter” gained massive attention to the media for how real and relevant the song is.

“Heart on My Sleeve” relevantly talks about real life situations attached to the artists’ lives, like the involvement of the Selena Gomez/Justin Beiber drama relating to The Weekend, and sonically compliments both of the artists’ musical sound. To make the song sound even more authentic, the robot even uses a production loop at the beginning of the song made by Metro Boomin, a real life producer and artist who has worked with Drake before.

To have the power to use any artist’s voice and create any kind of relevant song known to the artist has now changed the entire music industry game forever. But this isn’t where it stops.

Gaining over 1 million users in its five day release, “ChatGPT ” is a new public website/app using conversational artificial intelligence, where users can use the chatbot to ask anything, and the program will supply the best answers or sources to its best ability. While this may not always be the most reliable source as of now, the development of this project is still wholeheartedly in the works.

Even a few days ago on April 19, 2023, Snapchat incorporated its own artificial intelligence into its app, a free chatbot called “My AI.” The Snapchat AI holds the same artificial ability as “ChatGPT,” where it can answer educational questions, give advice, etc. The AI rests at the top of user’s screen on the chatting menu, which has had many negative opinions from app users claiming it can be seen as an “invasion of privacy” and “nonconsensual” to users. To make this backlash worse, users paying for Snapchat+ are the only people with the ability to delete or unpin the AI from their feed.

To have this much power at the tip of your fingertips comes at a cost, which is something society has been learning quickly. School districts and even students, for example, are one of the most heavily impacted members of society being affected by AI technology as of right now.

While the act of cheating has always been an age-old problem even without technological influence, AI technology has now given any student the power to plagiarize entire essays no matter the prompt. English and and History teachers all around the nation now have had an increase report of plagiarizing and cheating from AI technology being utilized in classrooms. The controversy that stands now is if AI technology should be embraced as a tool or banned entirely.

Many of our teachers on campus have started to find the ChatGPT use rising over the last few weeks, creating a concern for implementing the next steps to this ongoing issue of cheating.  Alexandria Montiel, an AP and CP English teacher shared that she thinks AI technology will affect schools and students. “I believe AI will become an obstacle education will face and has already faced before. Education is and should be evolving with the times and technology, just like how job opportunities change with each new generation. Students educational needs will have to change based on society, but may have their own thoughts and will diminished if they solely rely on AI’s.”

Meanwhile other teachers at LBHS, like history teacher Charles Garber have different thoughts about AI technology in schools. “So far, AI has had very little to no impact on any of my classes, since most of the work I give in my classes are done as a class together. I have not caught any of my students using AI to cheat, but I have heard students talking about using it in other classes. I think schools will have to find a way to check that work is not from AI by purchasing software that can detect work that comes from artificial intelligence.”

There are many programs implementing AI detector tools on digital platforms to help teachers determine whether an assignment was created using AI technology.  There are many detection programs in the making which can be accessible and ready to use in the future.

While the affects of artificial intelligence may have not impacted LBHS yet, the everyday developments of AI technology is certainly upon us and the need to remain ethical is a much needed aspect to enforce upon students as they complete work through the year.