The Silent Generation had their lives upset by the invention of the television and radio. Gen X had their lives upset by the invention of the internet. Us? We are the generation whose lives have been upset by the invention of Artificial Intelligence.
Despite being born within four years of each other, freshmen and seniors at Sequoyah were at very different stages of their lives when AI was introduced. In 2022, when AI first became widely available, seniors were in 9th grade, and freshmen were in 5th grade. But does the difference in age actually affect their perspective that much?
Freshmen agreed that they don’t remember much schoolwork before AI was implemented, on account of them being in fifth grade. However, Rocco Dow ’30, notes that, “I wasn’t really doing any research projects, but I did have one research project that I did… but I feel like now, with Perplexity [a free artificial intelligence program], if I went back and did it with, like, the sources I found, I could have done it much better.”
When asked about their overall thoughts on AI, Aiden Wagner ’30 notes, “I mean, I think it is causing some harm, but also, it's… useful, like, very useful.” In contrast, Dow says, “I don’t like AI all that much. Perplexity is literally the farthest I'll go.”
Yoshi Peretti ’27 has a different opinion from both of these freshmen. He says, “I probably would wish that there wasn't AI, just because of the uncertainty it creates in the future, even though I find it to be so much of a use.” Peretti specifies his use of AI as “It's sort of like having an assistant; I can just message, oh, can you make this reservation at this point? And also, it's just the best at… using it [for] research and stuff, like, especially colleges, I've been using it so much for that.”
Peretti says that many among the senior class believe that “AI is the worst thing in the world, and it's ruining the world.” He doesn’t completely share the same opinion, and he says the future is so uncertain that it’s hard to say. Liam Norton ’27, says that seniors agree that AI “is helpful” but “a lot of us… we're worried about it taking jobs and everything because… we're literally becoming adults next year and then we have to deal with all that.” Overall, Norton thinks, Sequoyah is a mostly “anti-AI” environment.
Wagner and Dow share similar answers when asked about their peers in the freshman class. Wagner says, “I know a few of my friends hate it because they’re all woke,” and thinks that the left-leaning environment of Sequoyah might affect opinions, but doesn’t know the broad scope of perspectives, and Dow says that freshmen don’t talk about AI very often, but he knows some people who are anti-AI.
In relation to the upperclassmen, Dow says that seniors’ opinions might be different because they had a longer period of time before the widespread use of artificial intelligence. This seemed to have some effect on senior opinions, since Peretti shared his experience of talking about it in school, which neither freshmen have had.
Meanwhile Peretti thinks that freshmen might have a different perspective: “The people that feel like they just aren't innately as good at school, so they have to fall onto AI instead of being able to learn and catch up… I think that those things could be maybe worse because they've had it from such a young age.” Neither Wagner nor Dow seem to have experienced this, but it’s possible that they are more reliant on it in some cases. Dow says that in 6th grade he started using AI to “find a bunch of my sources,” but that is the extent of most of his usage.
Norton thinks that the difference between freshmen and seniors' opinions at Sequoyah should not be that strong, and that the real difference probably lies on an individual level. Overall though, he says that most people at Sequoyah and in the world share the sentiment that AI has a negative impact on the world.
When asked about what the future holds for artificial intelligence, Wagner’s outlook is uncertain. She says that we can “stay like… where we are and more high-tech and stuff… or we will all die.” Dow has a more optimistic opinion, saying, “I think it’s going to take over the world… I also think we have the resources to make it so we’re not fully reliant on it” and that “we should be able to” handle it in the future.
On the other hand, Norton states: “I think AI is going to be integrated into the world the same way the internet was… and I just think it's another evolution of society that inevitably has to come. So I don't think it's like the end of the world. I just think that it's gonna make some things harder, some things easier, and people are gonna adapt.”
Well, whatever the future may be and whatever differences in opinions there may be, the students of Sequoyah are not afraid to think about, address, and confront AI.