Students and staff weigh in on the pros and cons of AI

A child in the 2010’s expressed that he could do math really well so he was given the equation “9 + 10” and the child answered “21.” The “9 + 10” meme was then born. A human and an AI Robot answer the same question in 2025. AI will always give the correct answer, but it will never match the cognitive and creative thinking of an actual human. Drawing by Sarah Carman

BY SARAH CARMAN
Oct. 8, 2025

When junior Gideon Peine made a mistake during class, he didn’t sit there in defeat. Instead, he used AI. 

“With programming, it helps with figuring out what you did wrong in your program,” Peine said. 

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has grown in recent decades and has made a big impact in people’s day-to-day lives. At Eisenhower High School, 35 staff members and 162 students took a survey about AI. More than half of those respondents use AI for school work and about 70% agree that students should be able to use AI on school assignments. 

On Oct. 2, 35 staff members and 162 students took a survey about the use of AI in school. Responses varied, but the majority of responses concluded that AI is helpful, but there are flaws in it as well. 

Senior Savannah Hernandez mentioned how useful AI has been in her classes. 

“I needed a certain diagram for school," Hernandez said. “ I put a bunch of different diagrams, and I said, ‘Hey can you make this into one diagram?’ and it did it.” 

Teachers also use AI to help them when they are in a time crunch.

“There was a time I was going to be gone so I asked AI to help generate sub plans,” said science teacher Shelby Allee. 

Almost 70% of respondents stated that AI can be a learning tool, but college writing teacher Melisa Marinelli shared her concerns about students using AI to think for them.

“I think tool is the operative word in that question,” Marinelli said. “It is a tool for learning, it’s not the learning itself. Learning matters.”

When asked personally about how the teachers feel about AI, many had concerns about its use in school. Teachers, like science teacher Barnabas Hawkinson, Spanish teacher Enrique Espinoza and Marinelli, have expressed how using AI in the wrong ways can lead to problems in the classroom.

“I personally give a zero, and we have a conversation,” Hawkinson said. “On assignments, the real goal of it is to gauge how you’re understanding the material and that’s not telling me anything you know about the material. It’s not meeting the purpose of why we’re doing this.”

Espinoza said some students have tried to use AI in his Spanish class. 

“I know what my Spanish kids know, and when they come up with stuff that they don’t know off the top of their head, then it's obvious that they use something different,” Espinoza said. 

Marinelli has been teaching college writing at Eisenhower for a while now and, she has seen AI being used in her class quite a bit. She explained that some students have used AI to write their entire essays for her class, but it’s not hard for her to spot.

“AI’s best essay is still not as good as most student’s worst ones. I would much rather see my students doing their own work, even if it’s not good. That way I can give them feedback,” Marinelli said.

Students in Eisenhower agree that using AI to cheat on assignments and essays are a concern, but that isn’t the only problem with AI.   

“It uses a lot of energy, a lot of resources to keep it running and it is getting way too real,” junior Brian Soto-Wood said. 

Studies have shown that AI takes a lot of energy and resources to run. Writer for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Adam Zewe, explained in his article, “Generative AI’s Environment Impact,” that running and improving AI takes a lot of electrical needs, emitting more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. He also stated that since millions of people also use AI all the time now, the hardware used to run AI overheats, which requires water in order to cool down. That water could be drawn from water supplies, disrupting the local ecosystems. Not to mention that many data centers have to be built in order to house AI.

Another problem is that scammers have found a new way to use AI for their businesses. 

“You can fall for fake AI messages. A lot of different programs and websites use it to lure you to scams, take your money, take your credit, take your name, your info,” senior Romari Howard said. 

According to business and marketing teacher Rachel Nally, there is no escaping AI when it comes to the business industry. Nally had a meeting with business professionals on Sept. 15, and AI came up in the conversation.

“Every one of them talked about how AI is used in their businesses,” Nally said. One accounting firm, they have AI record their meetings, and then it will take and transcribe all of that for them. It puts all of the notes together for the meetings so somebody doesn’t have to sit back and record as the meeting is going on.”

California Miramar University predicts that in the next 10 years, AI will quickly grow to be in almost all aspects of our lives. The best solution to the misuse of AI in school that students and teachers proposed, would be to teach students how to use AI as a tool and to warn them about the dangers of AI as well. 

“I think we need to be able to teach students how to use it responsibly, to help make things easier at their jobs,” Nally explained. 

Although AI can be helpful for researching, summing notes up, or revising papers, it’s only as good as the person who is controlling it. 

“I think it’s a tool, and we have to learn how to use it as a tool, not as a replacement for our thinking,” Marinelli said.