when weighing up the pros and cons of AI and the use of chat GPT especially in education settings, many factors have to be considered as positives and negatives.
Perspective of a Speech and Language Therapy student at Leeds Beckett:
"You just can't be sure where the information is coming from". "It makes it so easy that you're not learning anything". "Assistive AI can be useful as it helps people with dyslexia and reading difficulties, however generative AI is bad for students because doing research for yourself is better in a sense that you are learning how to be critical of things and having unique thoughts and opinions as opposed to AI giving everyone who asks it the same responses and ideas".
Personally, I think the use of AI for students from a Graphic Design perspective in contrast to the Speech and Language therapy course view is that can it can be extremely helpful in adapting workflow and efficiency. All that ChatGPT needs to begin writing its answer is a prompt or sentence explaining what you want from it. It is extremely fast in generating its response meaning its an efficient tool for brainstorming and cutting down/ saving time.
Adding to this, AI and generative tools can be helpful in relation to creating experimental and interesting outcomes that have been produced through a randomised process. An example of this is seen in Michael Connolly's generative piece 'Elementals', a collection of algorithmic work. Connolly states he "spent a long time designing / iterating to get to a script that had good variation as well as visual cohesion across a large set. I didn't want to dictate the outcomes too much beyond those initial choices and dilute the set." Generating the pieces in this way meant it only took a few moments for work to start appearing once given instructions, highlighting the interesting and visually appealing use of generative AI when used as a helpful tool rather than allowing it to design everything. I like the fact there is still a human touch with the given guides.
Connecting to the opinions of the SLT student, AI and generative technologies can make it very easily accessible to become over-reliant on and depend on it rather than thinking of unique ideas, stopping people figuring things out for themselves. This can be an extremely negative downside to AI as it can limit individualistic style and creative development.
Overall, I like using AI specifically chat GPT in order to inform some decisions and ideas rather than using it to generate my ideas wholly as it takes away a personal feel. I like to use AI as support to my process rather than IT being the process.
