Students reveal widespread use of AI in schools and universities

‘Dumbing people down’. Students reveal how they are using artificial intelligence (AI), with a new survey showing the most popular subject for chatbot cheating.

Three out of four Australian students are using artificial intelligence to do classwork at school or university.

Three out of four students are using artificial intelligence to do classwork at school or university, as hi-tech cheating is exposed by a new survey.

At least half of senior high school students have used AI for English homework, with 44 per cent using it to research assignments and 36 per cent to write, the Year13 survey reveals. One in three teenagers confessed to using AI to rewrite text, simplify complex ideas and study for exams, and one in five used it for “thought starters’’.

“I have used it to formulate my essays and derive quotes,’’ a 15-year-old Victorian boy told the Year13 survey of more than 1000 15-24-year-olds in a new report, What Gen Zs think of AI.

“I used it for some of my assignments as well.’’

Old-school solutions to counter downside of AI chatbots in education

A Year 12 girl from Brisbane said she had used generative AI chatbot ChatGPT for “a lot of my learning in my English … I used it to help me research literary theorists for different social issues and summarise narrative texts, which saved me a lot of time”.

AI technology is also taking over some of the work of teachers, with a 17-year-old Melbourne girl revealing she used AI writing tool Grammarly to “give me feedback’’ on practice essays – work traditionally expected of a teacher. Nearly one in three students use AI to “simplify ideas’’ – another fundamental task of teachers.

While English is by far the most popular subject for AI use, 19 per cent of students use it for maths, 17 per cent for biology, 15 per cent for business studies and 9 per cent for physics and modern history.

Surprisingly, just 8 per cent of students use AI for foreign language studies and 7 per cent use it in computing or software development.

A 23-year-old university student from Sydney told the researchers she was using AI “in documents ranging from my thesis to job applications’’.

A 21-year-old medical student in Canberra said “AI is absolutely fabulous in supporting me to understand and condense my medical school content’’.

“AI has massively saved me time and allowed me to enjoy my life having fun rather than always studying so hard,’’ she said.

“I use it like a tutor,’’ a 19-year-old university student said. “I can ask questions in my own way, and most of the time it will produce an answer tailored to my query.’’

A 23-year-old uni student from Melbourne said he had used AI to create art for a digital art competition, and to “break down abstract concepts in my university degree’’.

Another Melbourne uni student, 20, said he had used AI “to help me with coding and complex calculations in assignments’’.

The Year13 report – in collaboration with KPMG and Microsoft – is one of the first to measure AI use among the first generation to use the bleeding-edge technology at school and university. It reveals alarm about the dangers and benefits of AI, with at least two-thirds of Gen Zs fearing AI would spread misinformation, eliminate jobs, invade privacy, endanger data security and generate deepfakes.

Students have confessed to widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help with homework and assignments. Picture: iStock

Two-thirds believe AI will “prevent people from learning properly”, and more than 60 per cent were concerned about plagiarism and “making people lazy’’.

More than half the Gen Z students worried AI was “dumbing people down’’ and stealing creative ideas.

“It is developing at such speed that regulation hasn’t caught up yet and I worry about its capabilities in deepfakes and infringing of privacy,’’ an 18-year-old told the research team.

Another 18-year-old worried “privacy could be hugely compromised and government control could be exercised dangerously’’.

“I fear that it could take over many jobs and lead to mass unemployment, which is a common cause for many other social issues,’’ he said.

One in 50 school and university students “prefer to use AI as much as possible for getting their work done’’ while 16 per cent used AI and their own work equally.

Will Stubley, co-founder of Year13 – which specialises in the school-to-work transition – said students are “using AI to aid them rather than using the technology to do all their work entirely’’.