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For: Hayley Sum Yui-ching, 16, St Paul’s Convent School
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), it is inevitable that students will use it to help them with their homework assignments. Many teachers oppose using AI tools such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Poe, but there are numerous benefits.
When teenagers first gained access to the internet, it is likely that teachers disapproved, believing that using the web would stop students from thinking creatively on their own. Nowadays, few people would suggest that students writing essays should not use the internet for research.
AI can provide instant feedback for students who wish to improve their writing. This comes in handy when teachers are unavailable or when they want to enhance their work before submitting it.
Despite the stigma surrounding the use of generative AI in academia, it does not necessarily imply a lack of creativity. In fact, it could help a student achieve the opposite.
For example, a pupil could ask AI to elaborate on their original ideas or arguments, and the tool could provide alternative perspectives they would not have considered otherwise.
Still, it would be helpful to limit the extent to which students can use AI on their assignments. As long as both the student and teacher agree on these rules, this technology can be a great service to young learners.
Additionally, AI can help students with time-consuming parts of a homework assignment, such as organising data.
Such repetitive tasks eat away at the time students could spend learning. If pupils use AI to handle these simple tasks, they could redirect their energy towards the true purpose of the assignment.
Lastly, AI can recognise grammatical errors and suggest ways to refine a student’s writing.
Teachers would not have to decipher poorly written sentences in submissions if an assignment were proofread correctly.
Based on recommendations from AI, students could evaluate their writing style and pay closer attention to their grammar and sentence structure.
As long as students use AI wisely and learn to identify reliable sources of information independently, this technology can be a helping hand for students completing their homework.
It is rash to suggest that AI could only harm students. We should not dismiss it as something that hampers creativity and original thinking, but rather embrace it as a tool that can help learning and bring about new perspectives.
Against: Miya Zhang Zipei, 18, St Paul’s School (US)
Students should not be allowed to use AI to complete their homework assignments. AI may be efficient, but using the tool essentially outsources the brainpower that children need to complete their schoolwork, which can harm their learning.
Relying on external technology to complete tasks for you can lead to the formation of bad habits and hinder your ability to think critically and creatively.
Generative AI has been known to provide inaccurate information, undermining its usefulness as a tool for students. Young people using the technology for research may be misled, especially since they might not know how to fact-check the material they receive.
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology further suggests that using AI for writing may be detrimental to long-term brain development.
Dividing its subjects into three groups, researchers asked university students to respond to essay prompts using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine and nothing at all.
They discovered that ChatGPT users showed the lowest brain engagement and underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioural levels. This result should be particularly troubling for students, whose minds are in a critical stage of growth.
The same study also found that the different AI-produced texts used many of the same words and ideas. Rather than helping each student give a unique response, using the technology simply resulted in many variations of the same essay.
There is no point in assigning creative homework if all your pupils end up handing in more or less the same thing. Even if children only use AI to brainstorm, they may sacrifice their chance to exercise original thinking.
Students also lose the satisfaction of feeling a true sense of ownership and accomplishment over their work. In the study, those who used ChatGPT for writing were often unable to quote what they had produced and reported feeling like the passages were not truly their own.
AI can provide a finished product, but it does not guarantee student understanding. Using DeepSeek for a maths or science problem might bring you to the correct answer, but it does not necessarily make it clear to you how the problem was solved.
This defeats the whole purpose of homework in the first place. What good is having the answer if you still cannot solve the equation?
While AI may reduce the amount of time students spend on homework, it could come at the expense of an adequate education.
Schoolwork should be an opportunity for students to further their learning, not cut corners or outsource their thinking.
