A student describes how AI has been more helpful than human teachers in their IT studies, offering better explanations and support without judgment.
I genuinely don't understand why so many people are against AI, especially when it comes to education. I'm in my 3rdyear of a 4 year program and honestly AI has basically saved my academic life. I'm studying something related to IT and when I started I had pretty much 0 background in it so obviously I had a LOT of questions ( including really basic ones). I remember during my 1st year asking professors things and sometimes literally being made fun of because apparently my question was "stupid" or something I should already know. Which is great when you're already insecure because everyone around you seems to know more than you lol. And honestly a lot of my professors just weren't good at explaining things. Like they'd come into class, open a PowerPoint, read the slides, maybe explain a couple things and then sit down with their laptop. That was basically the class. I'd go home and realize I understood almost nothing and had to figure it out myself anyway. And asking questions wasn't always helpful either. Sometimes they'd explain it again but in basically the exact same way so obviously if I didn't understand it the first time I still didn't understand it. And then what? Ask them a 3rd time? At some point you just feel embarrassed and say "yeah okay I get it" even though you absolutely don't. That's where AI entered and changed my life. I can ask the dumbest question ever and it doesn't care. I can literally say "I don't understand a single word you just said, explain it to me like I know absolutely nothing about this" and it will. It never makes me feel stupid for not knowing something. I'm still the one studying. I'm still the one doing the assignments and taking the exams. But I genuinely don't think I would have gotten this far without it. I also think AI could eventually be really useful for grading. Obviously AI can make mistakes too, I'm not denying that. But professors are human too. They're tired, they can misunderstand an answer, accidentally give someone the wrong grade, be inconsistent when correcting 30 exams, etc. I really don't understand why people act like human grading is somehow completely objective and error-free. I'd honestly trust more a well designed AI grading system with clear criteria. And I know people are probably going to hate this part but AI has genuinely been a better teacher to me than most of the actual teachers I've had. I also don't understand why whenever AI and education are mentioned people immediately jump to "students use it to cheat". Yeah, obviously some do. People use basically every technology for shitty things. That doesn't make the technology itself useless. I've never used it because I don't want to do anything myself. It's literally the opposite. I use it because I WANT to understand what I'm doing. So yeah. I understand being worried about how AI is used. I understand being against people using it to cheat or replace their own thinking. But being against AI itself? I genuinely don't get it. I'm the one who has done the work for these 3 years, but AI is a huge part of the reason I was able to understand that work instead of giving up
Discusses how AI excels at finding answers within defined boundaries but may lack the ability to question underlying assumptions, suggesting a key difference from human intelligence.
This opinion article argues that AI is forcing education to shift from credential-based learning to developing human judgment, curiosity, and critical thinking, making timeless methods like Socratic questioning and the Feynman Technique newly relevant.
The author discusses whether AI is helpful or harmful, sharing personal experience that it accelerated learning when used with proper context and honesty, and counters common criticisms about inaccuracies.