A case for AI: skill building, accessibility, career growth, and academics
Every modern-day student has witnessed the outcry caused by the so-called “era of AI.” While headlines and syllabi highlight cheating, shortcuts, and dishonesty, a quieter story is playing out in research labs and controlled settings, and is now extending into classrooms. When used well, AI can help narrow gaps in traditional education.
AI can build skills as much as it can replace them
One fear central to the mainstream AI scare is that a resource so powerful will do all the research and thinking for us. However, early research suggests that how we use it plays a meaningful part of it all. In a randomized control trial at Harvard, researchers found that students using an AI tutor in an undergraduate physics class received median test scores of 4.5 out of 5, as opposed to 3.5 for students in a traditional active learning environment. These students also learned in less time (49 minutes against 75 minutes) and reported higher engagement and motivation. However, this doesn’t mean that we should all use chatbots blindly and take their answers as law. Rather than simply handing over answers, the AI tutor guided students through problem-solving and logic.
AI has potential as a coach, but loses merit when used as a cheat sheet. The study’s researchers caution against replacing human interaction and traditional active learning environments, underscoring the fragility of such usage. Additionally, it’s worth remembering the scope of the experiment: there were about 200 students in a single Harvard physics course in this sample, so this is just one promising data point.
AI can fill in the gaps around great teaching but cannot be expected to replace it. According to The New York Times, “A.I. tools condition people to expect immediate responses and deny them the experience of working through challenges … which is crucial for skill development and one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.” I want to emphasize: a world where AI does the bulk of the educating for our next generation is not the point. Whether or not we personally endorse or reject it, artificial intelligence, large language models, chatbots, and all the integrated interfaces that follow appear unavoidable for the foreseeable future. While the popularization of these tools undoubtedly comes with new problems concerning data privacy, resource usage, fair-use policy, and much, much more, the reality is that AI is becoming integrated into our consumer products and seeping into our daily lives.
But inevitable doesn’t have to mean exclusively harmful. If AI is going to be woven into how we learn, work, and live, the better question isn’t whether to tiptoe around it or blindly accept it, but how to pick and choose how we engage with it on our own terms and under certain conditions. The study’s results suggest that when these tools are designed to make us think rather than think for us, there’s a case for AI as a supplement to education, with real conditions attached.
AI makes learning more accessible
Not every student learns the same way. Since elementary school, my teachers have been augmenting lesson plans to draw on the whiteboard, have students read aloud, or even compose a silly little jingle to remember a fact. AI can support mature or tech-savvy students by acting as a personalized study buddy with the ability to reframe lessons into bite-sized or targeted chunks.
Moreover, AI-generated live captions can supplement human captioners and note-takers, especially when those services are unavailable. For instance, areas without the resources to hire employees to do so may simply lack accommodations for students who need these live translations or captions, causing these students to have to work harder just to comprehend lectures and content. Additionally, captions generated live can more easily support students with hearing impairments, non-native speakers, and those facing cognitive load challenges. Even for the average student, it can aid understanding. However, there are real limits, like AI misreading jargon or accents and misinterpreting content. Depending on usage, privacy issues, algorithmic bias, and still inequitable access to these resources can be relevant considerations. But compared to no captions, captions with a reasonable degree of accuracy and accessibility make live transcription possible for many students who might otherwise go without.
AI can prepare us for careers ahead
Job hunting is basically a part-time job of its own, and the target is truly always moving. Employers that were surveyed by the World Economic Forum expected nearly 40% of the skills required for future jobs to keep changing or evolving. It’s really no wonder students feel the pressure to turn to AI for help with resumes, cover letters, and interview preparation. Especially for college students looking for internships, the sheer quantity of applications almost necessitates cutting some corners. Those corners used to be depth and personalization; today, with chatbots able to spit out a customized resume in less than a minute, what new corners are being cut? These are certainly important considerations, but the reality is that people looking for a job, students or not, are having a hard time.
When used as a second pair of eyes, AI can genuinely help. It can catch typos and clunky phrases in a resume, suggest how to tailor a cover letter to a particular posting, or even pretend to be the hiring manager and simulate an interview. For students without easy access to a career center, a mentor in their field, or people in their life who are familiar with the hiring process, this low-pressure and connection-independent practice can level the playing field meaningfully.
But the same rule applies: AI works best when it pushes you to do the work rather than doing the work for you. A cover letter written by a chatbot tends to sound like everyone else’s, with the same AI clichés like unnecessary em dashes, “this” and not “this” arcs, and generic asks. An interview memorized from chatbot output will probably crumble after a clever follow-up question, and wouldn’t you want to be hired for your real skills and personality traits, not the optimized, manufactured ones? AI can be useful as a tool to sharpen your materials and provide context for the hiring landscape that not everyone has access to, but it should be an aide and not the primary author.
AI is no cure-all, but it isn’t the end of learning either. Promising early research points to a muddier truth: these tools can be helpful, and they work best when they help us think harder. They can widen access at lower costs than traditional supports like tutoring or cram school, helping level the playing field. AI absolutely should not replace human support or the traditional human learning environment, but it can help supplement the learning that happens in the classroom. Ultimately, whether they close gaps or widen them depends on the choices students, teachers, and employers individually decide to make about how to use and judge them.