AI, or Artificial Intelligence, usually refers to programs and system that are built using machine learning and the analysis of real world data. These tools excel at solving real world, complex tasks and are usually much more flexible than their algorithmic counterparts.
While accessible AI has been around for well over a decade now, it has only recently taken off as more AI related tools and systems have become useful to students. Of these tools, the most common ones used are AI art generation such as that done by stable diffusion and text generation through Chat GPT.
Tools such as ChatGPT can be used to efficiently analize and summarize text. Furthermore, it can cite sources and help organize information in an efficient way that could help streamline the independant learning process.
Although very powerful, these tools still can produce many inaccuracies. Because of this, without proper diligence, students could be misled into believe incorrect information. This is especially bad for students who may try to use these tools to autocomplete their assignments, as opposed to using them purely for assistance.
AI can be used as a powerful tool to assist in learning independently if used correcly. That being said, these are best used with student imposed diligence and in a way that supplements rather than replaces their own research. Furthermore, because of the flexibility of these AI models, future research could be done for the idea of directly incorperating these tools in a learning environment.