Students in Singapore admit using AI to not ‘waste’ time on hard subjects, raising concerns among teachers

SINGAPORE: A recent survey involving 500 secondary school students in Singapore revealed that all of them use artificial intelligence (AI) for homework. However, some students said they are using it to not “waste” time on difficult subjects, worrying educators.

One Secondary 2 student admitted she uses AI for maths because she finds the subject hard and doesn’t want to “waste” her time. “I find maths quite hard, so I don’t even really bother,” she said.

While the Ministry of Education has developed an AI-in-Education Ethics Primer, education expert Jonathan Sim said, “There isn’t any very clear guidance across the board.”

According to Malay Mail, citing the survey by Channel News Asia (CNA), 84% of secondary school students use AI for their homework at least once a week. Of these, 43% use AI once a week, 29% several times a week, 4% several times a day, and 8% once a day. The rest of the students use it at least monthly.

The report noted that students mainly turn to AI to generate assignment ideas (86%), solve maths problems (63%), and proofread their work (47%).

One Secondary 3 student said that when she feels “stuck” with her English compositions, she just gets ChatGPT to list some ideas to get her “brain juices flowing”.

Many students openly talk about using AI, with some teachers even encouraging responsible use.

Still, despite AI being commonly used, only 51% of students attend schools with clear rules on its use, while 33% are unsure of their school’s policies.

Teachers in the city-state hold widely varying views on AI use. Mr Sim noted that while some educators are “very excited” about it, others are unsure how to deal with it and prefer to act as if it doesn’t exist.

Mr Sim also mentioned how unreliable AI detection tools are. He warned that this inconsistency could harm teacher-student relationships. “If the student writes like us, and it gets constantly flagged… That’s going to affect the student and the student’s motivation to learn.” /TISG 

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