Generative AI shares its defining characteristics with something every student learns about in their first year at Upper School: a parasite. It sucks energy, water, and critical thinking skills from us, its host, and gives back absolutely nothing productive. Making ChatGPT write your essay for you because you couldn’t be bothered to do it yourself costs you critical thinking and analysis skills that everyone desperately needs at every point in their lives. 

This is especially true right now, as many sources of information that used to be trustworthy are becoming less and less accurate. When the school announced its AI policy, I was impressed. The staff had evidently thought about how best to use it while not letting it take over students’ lives. However, they have also been hypocritical about Generative AI.

From the AI-generated photos of bears in the library to the assembly slideshows that are made entirely of AI images, the Upper School is essentially ignoring its own AI policy. Generative AI doesn’t stop being generative just because the final product is images and not words, and changing the product doesn’t make it any less parasitical. 

With the pictures of bears in the library, whoever sets up signs could ask students if any of them want to draw images for the signs. It may be an extra step, but the end result of not losing the respect of some of the student body is worth it. 

With slides, the solution is even easier. Every slide that had AI images in it could be replaced with a stock image from Google. It takes less effort to type in and find real images than it takes to tell an AI to generate one, and it doesn’t give the parasite more energy. Many of the slideshows that use AI have great topics, structure, and messages, but I as well as  several of my peers cannot internalize them. AI-generated images delegitimize every presentation in which they are used.

AI is slowly but surely infesting the school, but the solution is fairly simple; we need to change public opinion. The farther you look into generative AI, the worse it gets, and students expressing their disapproval towards it will alert other students, which will alert teachers, until we can make the usage go back to not taking over our lives.