Chemistry teacher Maria Intensipa is missing out on the good old days of last year.
The Jose Gregorio Salas Regional High School, where she works, lacks sufficient computers and a reliable internet. Few students can purchase the high-end smartphones and data plans that cutting-edge AI needs.
Intencipa had heard of ChatGpt, but most of her students used it because of what she could tell. In 2023, some began whispering about getting help from “Lucia.” She thought it might be the name of the tutor, but they were referring to the Luzia app that transforms WhatsApp messaging app into an AI bot.
Since then, last year, AI has moved to almost every class. School teachers noticed an unusually high quality answer surge that didn't resemble the typical work of students. Homework and essays suddenly featured erudition discussions, sophisticated vocabulary, and points that were not taught in classes or textbooks.
“When assigning homework, students just use AI,” Intencipa said. The rest of the world. “Because it's easy.”
Despite the brilliance, more children were failing their exams, the teacher said.
From July 2024, AI was suddenly everywhere at once in Latin America after the meta platform incorporated chatbots into apps across the region. Whether users wanted it or not, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have become homes for a variety of AI bots.
Jose Gregorio Salas' rural high school students took them into their homework. This small farming and cow-breaking family community was no longer protected from the AI revolution that had disrupted education around the world. I couldn't get away anymore because the new bot was embedded in the app that the new bot was already using. Meta was tweaking apps for emerging market consumers, making them cheaper to use and designed to work with unsleashed phones and patch-like connections.
Openai's pioneering generation AI chatbot ChatGpt is dominant in the US, but for many Colombian students, Meta's AI upgrades have become a go-to bot. META has a controversial agreement with telecommunications companies that restrict some users on cheaper data plans to use certain apps and sites, including Meta's.
Intencipa and other teachers in Colombia are concerned that students will lose years of basic education as traditional teaching methods are no longer effective.
“Here Facebook is the king,” says Luisa Cardenas, a social science teacher at Kimbaya in the Coffee region of Colombia. The rest of the world. Her students “we simply copy what comes up in the chat, but they can't analyse what they're replicating.”
Some graduate without learning how to read and write, she said.
Even before this powerful tool of fraud arrived, Colombia faced a major educational challenge.
According to Icesi University's Educational Reality Observatory, 54 out of 100 students have completed high school, of which 100 have completed high school, only 54 have reached acceptable levels of critical reading, mathematics and natural sciences.
Colombian students were ranked the worst in creative thinking among countries evaluated by the International Student Assessment Program of Economic Cooperation Organizations.
Students say the shortcuts are so appealing that they are easy to take. It helps them spend more time interacting with real people, often in the same app they encounter bots, and buy more time by avoiding the monotony of uninspired lessons. “I want everything,” said Sergio, a 16-year-old student. The rest of the world. “When they give me a task, I just research and copy. I haven't read it or do anything. I'm wondering if what it says to me is true, but it helps me save time.”
An ever-growing number of research suggests that misuse or overuse of AI can hurt children.
In April, a report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that researches and promotes a healthier digital environment for young people, said that AI tools pose “unacceptable risks” for users under the age of 18. AI tools can also provide dangerous information and sometimes bad advice, the report said.
A study in June at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggested that large-scale language models can help write essays, but that reliance on them can reduce cognitive activity.
AI can be a valuable tool for some of the repetitive tasks that overworked teachers need to perform.
Last year's report from the World Economic Forum said that generative AI can personalize learning experiences, reduce the time teachers spend on daily tasks, and dedicate more time to students.
Columbia teachers use tools such as Twinkl and Eduaide.ai to access pre-designed materials and assist in chores such as grading and completing forms. Some of them use ChatGpt or Google's Gemini for various tasks. This helps to reduce the burden on teachers who may handle more than 100 students each week across multiple classes. Google runs ads on Facebook and Instagram and promotes the Gemini chatbot as a time-saving tool for teachers and students.
The Colombian government has said it will promote the safe and progressive use of AI.
A spokesman for Colombia's Ministry of Education said The rest of the world In primary schools, AI is used in a “limited” way and requires “always accompanied by adults”, but in high schools, chatbots are useful “as long as critical reflexes are promoted.”
Colombian neighbor Brazil has banned the use of mobile phones in classrooms. A study by the city government in Rio de Janeiro, conducted six months later without a mobile phone at school, found improvements in student participation, performance and focus.
Intencipa said it doesn't require formal research to know that AI is attacking students.
“I give them a research assignment and they look it up there,” she said. We mentioned AI bots in Meta's apps. “When I ask for your opinion, they do the same.”
This forces teachers to rethink their assessment methods. Traditional written task-based assessment approaches need to be rethinked to accurately assess whether students truly understand concepts, develop skills, and engage in creative thinking. The rest of the world.
Educators are currently spending considerable time searching for ways to detect AI-generated jobs and assess whether students are developing essential skills.
Some people turn to AI write detection tools. Some have more oral written exams. Some ask students to orally discuss, defend and explain how they studied the paper.
In Guatavita, Byron Guilal, a teacher of philosophy and religion, a small town near Bogota, uses role-play to promote engagement.
He chooses complex, ultra-local topics that AI is not used to. He then lets the students discuss, each acting as a local mayor, company executive, priest, and other stakeholders.
Students work together, laugh, blush, and sometimes loud, but few people watch the phone.
“It's an oral movement, so they have to use critical thinking,” Giral says. The rest of the world. “If you only seek written work, it's very difficult to tell them they're learning.”
Chemistry teacher Intencipa made the radical decision to abandon the pillars of high school classes for generations: homework.
She lets students do all their studies and work In front of her, make sure they respond in their minds.
“Now I'm holding all my work in the classroom,” she said.
