Argumentative Essay
Should the use of AI be forbidden for
student assignments?
ChatGPT and similar AI systems can produce texts, covering a wide variety of topics and styles, and they
only need a short prompt to do so. This new technology could have a big impact on many aspects of life:
One of the most straightforward ones is education, particularly when used by students for written
assignments. While some people have raised concerns about these AI systems being used for cheating,
students should still be allowed to use them outside of language courses.
Leaving aside the question if ChatGPT or other AI tools can be used to completely replace the writing
process, it is obvious that they can be used to improve it.
When students have to write reports, they are often not yet familiar with the topic at hand and have to
learn about it in addition to actually writing the text. This leads to students only reading one or two pieces
of information and developing a one-sided view of the issue.
AI tools are capable of condensing long texts into short and precise summaries and thus enable students
to consider multiple perspectives in the limited time they have to prepare for writing the assignment.
Another aspect of writing many students struggle with is to make their texts easy to understand. Of
course, optimally they would read them to another student and get their feedback. However, that often
isn’t feasible or even forbidden - in the case of graded assignments meant to be completed alone - and AI
tools can help here too, by providing alternative formulations for phrases or sentences. Using those in
comparison to their texts, students can make them more readable and less repetitive.
Opponents of allowing students to use AI tools fear that they will be used to cheat and that texts
generated by them will be passed off as original work. While this may prove to be a real problem for
language courses, for all other types of assignments the form of the text isn’t the important part, the
content is, and only that will be graded. For those non-language courses, ChatGPT is another tool for
writing better texts, but it won’t help with forming opinions or drawing conclusions, it just allows students
to focus on those. In addition to that it is also easier to accurately grade assignments, if students can
communicate their ideas clearly, meaning that maybe the use of AI writing tools should even be
encouraged.
AI writing tools like ChatGPT can help students produce better tests that incorporate all viewpoints of a
topic more easily and in less time. Opponents worry that they will be used to cheat by claiming authorship
for texts produced by them. However, in non-language courses, the content of an assignment is the most
important part, and AI tools are not able to generate that.
In the future, when ChatGPT becomes more powerful, it might become necessary to regulate its use in all
courses. However, currently there is no reason to not allow students to utilize it fully.