AI as the Homework Equity Machine
It has been said that AI will produce a “homework apocalypse,” as students will simply use GAI to complete their homework assignments.
This is undoubtedly happening, and when students rely on AI to do their work their work for them, they don’t learn what they often would from doing the work. There have been studies that prove this, but it’s also rather obvious.
But AI isn’t so either/or, it’s a general-purpose technology that has positive and negative applications. Think of electricity: it can both electrocute people and allow students to do their homework when it gets dark.
The positive uses for AI in homework are also somewhat obvious, though they require raising awareness.
AI can help parents who aren’t educators and haven’t thought a lot about how to teach and/or don’t know enough about the content area to help their kids with their homework.
As a society, we’ve always embraced parents helping their kids with their homework. We may roll our eyes when they use a “heavy pen,” but the principle of parents helping kids with their homework is widely accepted in society.
It can function as a parent or tutor fill-in for students whose parents don’t help them with their homework for any number of reasons.
It’s an inexpensive tutor. Many lament that the top-level models require paying around $20/month for access, at least if you want more than a limited number of prompts. They rightly point out that this is unfair to students who can’t afford these AI systems. While this is true, currently many students have parents who are well-educated and can help them with all of their homework and/or have parents who are willing to pay $75-$150/hour (Northeast US rates) for tutors who will meet them in person or jump online and help them with their homework. There are way more* families that can afford this than those who can afford private tutors. $240/year for pretty good tutoring in all subjects is affordable for most. And, as long as you don’t need a ton of help, you can get by with free queries.
It’s a great college admissions counselor. Many people are unaware of this, but families often hire private college admissions counselors who charge substantial fees for their services, with many commanding between $5,000 and $50,000+ per student. These high-end consultants provide extensive support throughout the entire college admissions process. Services typically include helping students develop compelling academic and extracurricular profiles, offering personalized coaching on application strategies, and providing “in-depth feedback” on essays. Many counselors work closely with students to craft narratives that highlight their unique strengths and experiences, often dedicating significant time to reviewing and editing application essays. If AIs can do all of this at a small fraction of the price, isn’t that more equitable than the status quo?
Is AI perfect? No, it still hallucinates, though rates are coming way down, and we are already starting to see specialized tutor bots that claim to have low to zero hallucination rates in the core subjects that students are likely to study. Use of the right tools means you get proper bibliographies. And, even with hallucination rates, it’s better than nothing (“no one”), which is the tutor that many students currently have access to.
Of course, as I mentioned, there is a downside: When students entirely offload their work to AI they won’t learn. This is the same as if the parent sat there and completed the homework rather than helping the student with it. How can schools solve this problem?
First, don’t grade the homework, grade what they can do better by doing the homework. Students who work with AIs to learn rather than replace learning will have better presentations, perform better in debates, create better projects, establish better portfolios, and do better on tests.
Second, prioritize the concept of the “flipped classroom.” More activities and projects in class incentivize students to learn outside of class.
Third, educate the students. At this point, most students have at least logged on to an AI tool, but most do not how to use them well. Most only see the tools as answer machines or paper-writing tools and are unaware of simple prompts such as -
*Explain this to me, a 9th grader
*Please generate test questions for…
*Ask me each question, one at a time, when I answer the question, give me feedback on my answer
*This is my presentation (PDF upload)...what questions might you ask me about it?
*I attached my paper, please identify any passages that are not clear
*I don’t understand this passage in my book that is written in English, please translate it into…
*If you were my opponent in a debate and this was my argument, what questions might you ask me?
[More debate uses]
Fourth, Educate your community. Teaching your community how to use AI will empower your community and enable the parents to help the students. It will also help those parents understand the world we are entering, have a broader perspective on how to best educate their kids, and help to level the playing field between those who know how to help their kids using AI and those who don’t. Based on work being done in Southern California (Orange County), there is high demand for parent education. Educating the parents in your community about AI and how they can use it to help their children with their homework will essentially create a pool of free Tas that can personalize instruction.
Using AI as a homework equity machine takes work by both teachers and students. But if we don’t put in the work, we will get a homework apocalypse.