Artificial Intelligence has been one of the best improvements to life that technology has brought to the world. The digitalization of normal human activity has made life easier and better. The education system, of course, is not left out. The integration of artificial intelligence into education and learning has offered many benefits to both students and teachers alike. These benefits include personalized learning for individual students based on academic capacities, targeted feedback to help learning outcomes, immediate support and assistance to students within and outside the classroom, and so much more. For the teachers, it does most of the administrative tasks like scheduling classes, grading, and sourcing teaching materials, giving them more time to focus on the students. It also offers them information about each student allowing them to tailor their teaching patterns to suit each student so that the curriculum will not be boring for one student and difficult for another. Every student will catch up.

There are a lot of benefits following the introduction of artificial intelligence into the education and learning system. However, there are some downsides to the use of artificial intelligence for study. Most of these disadvantages occur when there is no regulation to the use of artificial intelligence systems or when a student overuses it and begins to rely on it for academic achievements instead of using it as leverage to get better. In the course of the article, we will be exploring ten downsides to the use of artificial intelligence for students. 

Dependence and Overreliance

There is a risk that students and teachers alike might begin to depend and over-rely on artificial intelligence for school work. It is a known fact that it is easy to get addicted to a particular act. For example, a student previously used 4 hours to do an assignment without any external assistance from artificial intelligence, then the student discovers that artificial intelligence does the same for him or her for 1 hour. It is easy for a student with the wrong mindset to depend on artificial intelligence every time in order to save an extra three hours that he or she can spend playing games, watching movies, or just doing nothing.

Additionally, overreliance on artificial intelligence can make a student creatively blunt. This means that students and teachers can lose their creativity and critical thinking. This can also extend to the way they think and their ability to solve both academic and real world problems.

Privacy Concerns

In order to tailor and personalize learning for individual students, artificial intelligence systems need to collect personal information from students. This information could include demographics, biometrics and basic identification methods, school, attendance records, addresses, and more. If security and privacy are hacked or breached, a student’s information will be out there for anyone and if it gets into the wrong hands, the effect will not be nice. Anyone who uses artificial intelligence will have to be mindful of glitches that allow a third party to gain access to their webcam or microphone. If privacy concerns are not addressed, it tends to interfere with trust and cooperation while casting one party in a negative eye against the other.

Bias and Fairness

Bias is a form of prejudice for or against an object or idea or even a person. Most times, bias is formed without personal experience of who the bias is expressed to. Artificial intelligence could be biased towards a particular group of persons, favoring them over another. For instance, these systems might think that Chinese students will be a lot smarter than other students from other countries. This could lead to the Chinese students getting more academic workload, more topics to cover than other students. 

There could be bias in race, gender (if a man is perceived to be smarter than a woman), field of study (if people in science majors are perceived to be smarter than people in art majors), social status (if people from more financially stable backgrounds are perceived to have received better education or are smarter than people from less financially stable backgrounds).

Some artificial intelligence systems might have some sort of discrimination or unfairness towards certain people. A good system should have equality.

Lack of human interaction

Before now, students had to go to the classrooms for learning and exams. This encouraged human-to-human interactions as you had to ask a colleague to borrow a pen, hold a door, keep a seat, make friends and study groups, hang out in the cafeteria, and a lot more. Today, it is possible for a student or teacher to be enrolled or teaching in a school and they have not entered that particular school environment as some schools offer distance learning. This approach involves teaching, assignments, quizzes, and exams being done online. 

This can reduce interpersonal relationships and collaboration between students and teachers. It does not help to build social skills and relationships as one could stay indoors all day long for seven days, leaving the house only to buy groceries. If this is done for a long period of time without lifestyle changes, it could result in mental health due to social isolation. Also, a sedentary lifestyle might lead to a more serious medical challenge like obesity, high cholesterol, and blood pressure, and some metabolic syndrome.

Accessibility and Equity

The use of artificial intelligence can create an educational gap between students who are able to afford and access an artificial intelligence system and students who do not have the means to afford one. The cost of implementing and managing artificial intelligence systems might be too expensive for schools with less funding and financial backup programs to afford. Their students and teachers will not have the experience and benefits of elevating their academic performance with artificial intelligence. This might lead to them falling behind when compared with people who do have the opportunity.

Ethical Considerations 

Some ethical considerations surrounding the use of artificial intelligence have been mentioned above. There is the issue of privacy. This is the fear that private students and teacher’s information should not be hacked into or leaked to a third party. For instance, should these systems track a student’s browsing history in order to personalize the learning experience? If yes, according to ethics, how much is used, and how is it used? Any data or information submitted should be managed privately within the law of ethics.

Second is the issue of bias and fairness in algorithms to make sure that everyone is treated alike regardless of age, gender, social status, field of study, country, race, and others. Another ethical challenge is the transparency of AI systems. There should be open communication on how these systems are used in order to build trust.

Quality of Learning 

The quality of learning that artificial intelligence has to offer is different from that of the traditional. First, there is the matter of the extra human emotion and empathy added to the learning experience. Artificial intelligence does not have emotions and will be expected to act exactly as it has been programmed to. There is no sort of connection between the system and the individual using it.

Second, there is the matter of whether the artificial intelligence system is actually teaching the students properly or organizing the classroom study materials according to the course outline required for a particular year. This is to make sure that there is truly learning going on and not just a means to quickly get more work done in less time. The use of artificial intelligence can provide shortcuts for students, without helping them get a deeper understanding or retention of their bookworm.

Technical Dependence 

Technical dependence is another downside to using artificial intelligence systems in education. This is due to the fact that these systems solely rely on the use of technology software and devices to be able to function. This also involves the use of Wi-Fi and data connections to access information. This is a challenge to study in the sense that if service lines are down, students and teachers cannot perform educational activities as compared to the traditional learning method just a textbook, study book, and pen.

Impact on Teaching Methods

This can be a con to using artificial intelligence for studying. These algorithm-generating content will decide the pace of learning depriving students of the delicate way a human teacher will approach a topic. Also, classes with a teacher might involve songs, stories, and experiences to make students relate more to the topic. This makes classroom experiences more interesting. Some people might say incorporating artificial intelligence into education dehumanizes the learning experience.

Regulatory Issues

Regulatory issues involve knowing how much is too much of artificial intelligence’s involvement in education and how much is too little. Achieving a balance sometimes can be hard.

Conclusion

There are so many benefits of artificial intelligence to our world today, especially in the aspect of education. Artificial intelligence is effective for everyone regardless of age, class, or class. With offers like personalized learning, targeted feedback, and support, it has become a study buddy. However, there are some factors to consider before incorporating artificial intelligence into your study pattern. Always weigh your pros and cons before deciding on your future goals.