by Brendan Clarey
A up-to-date poll shows that a majority of likely voters believe artificial intelligence should not be in schools because it facilitates cheating.
Center Square Voter’s Voice poll A study by Noble Predictive Insights found that more than two-thirds of likely voters believe that artificial intelligence should not be in schools.
A recent poll of nearly 2,300 likely voters found that 68% agreed with the statement that “AI should be kept out of schools” because it “facilitates cheating.” Only 22% supported keeping AI in schools, with the rest saying they were unsure.
The July 8-11 poll included 1,006 Republicans, 1,117 Democrats and 172 true (undecided) independents. It has a margin of error of 2.1%. The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll is one of only six national polls tracking the United States.
Public attitudes toward AI have changed over time, and his company’s survey results have revealed its limitations and risks, according to David Byler, head of research at Noble Predictive Insights.
The number of likely voters reporting concerns also held steady among parents. Sixty-nine percent of respondents with children under 18 said they thought AI should not be in schools. Byler said that was because they were aware of the risks.
“We’re seeing a high level of concern among parents of children under 18 about AI fraud,” Byler said. “This is exactly what you would expect if there was no data at all.”
Byler said it is natural for parents to be very concerned about their children’s education, which will be very different from their own due to technological advances.
“Many parents who want their children to not only be able to think but also create quality products that will help them succeed in the workplace will be very concerned about AI fraud,” Byler said.
The survey question about AI in schools was part of a broader inquiry about how voters perceive the emerging technology. Byler said society has caught up with the hype surrounding the advance.
“What we see here broadly in questions about AI is that society is playing catch-up to the technology,” Byler said. “When AI technologies were first released and then became very common, all of a sudden there were all these anecdotes about professors suddenly seeing students writing these long, flowery essays that were on the wrong topic or cited the wrong sources.”
“You saw students using them before teachers had a chance to catch up,” Byler said. “You also saw a lot of people trying to use AI in business settings but then falling victim to expensive hallucinations.”
Hallucinations are situations where generative AI programs create content with inaccuracies that still sound plausible. Programs like ChatGPT rely on vast language models that operate source text to create conversational responses to user prompts. These source texts are not always correct.
“We’ve actually found a lot of anecdotal evidence of AI in schools, of students using it to get around homework, turning in questionable or incorrect work,” Byler said.
“People are worried that AI will allow cheating without any comparable benefit,” Byler said. “People are starting to say, ‘This isn’t just a benefit,’ or ‘This isn’t just a godlike power. This thing has inherent weaknesses and problems.’”
“At this point, we’ve reached a state of equilibrium in how the average person perceives AI and what it can do, and we’ve seen some of the bugs, and we’re kind of pulling back on that hype,” Byler said.
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Brendan Clarey is a contributor Central Square.
