By Eniola Johnson
Student Perspective | TechAfrica Opinion
Artificial intelligence is no longer something I only hear about in the news or see in movies. It is already part of my generation’s everyday life.
I am 16 years old and in Grade 10, and AI is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore at school. Students are using it to explain difficult topics, generate ideas, summarise information, check grammar, solve problems and sometimes even complete assignments.
And honestly, I understand why.
School can be overwhelming. Sometimes a teacher explains something once and you still don’t understand it. Sometimes you have several assignments due at the same time. Sometimes you know what you want to say but don’t know how to express it.
AI can help.
It can explain a complicated concept in simpler language. It can give you examples. It can help you brainstorm ideas or identify mistakes in your work.
Used properly, AI could become one of the most useful learning tools my generation has ever had.
But there is a problem.
The easier AI makes schoolwork, the easier it also becomes to stop learning.
The temptation to let AI do everything
This is where I think schools and students need to be careful.
There is a big difference between asking AI to explain something you don’t understand and asking AI to do your assignment for you.
If I use AI to explain a difficult mathematics concept and then solve the problems myself, I am learning.
If I ask AI to solve the entire assignment and simply submit the answers, I may get a good grade—but I haven’t necessarily learned anything.
That could become dangerous for my generation.
We are growing up at a time when technology can produce an answer almost instantly. If we become too dependent on that convenience, we could lose the ability to think through difficult problems ourselves.
And not everything we need to learn can be outsourced to a machine.
AI doesn’t know everything
Another problem is that AI can be wrong.
It can produce an answer that sounds extremely confident even when the information is inaccurate. A student who simply accepts whatever an AI system says could end up learning something completely wrong.
That means students need another skill:
knowing how to question technology.
We need to check sources, compare information and use our own judgement.
In my opinion, AI literacy should eventually become just as important as traditional computer literacy.
Schools need to adapt
I don’t think the answer is simply to ban AI from schools.
Technology has changed education before. We didn’t ban calculators because they made calculations easier. We didn’t ban computers because they made research faster.
Instead, schools had to teach students how to use those tools properly.
I think AI should be treated in a similar way.
Schools should teach students when AI is appropriate, when it isn’t, how to check AI-generated information, how to protect their privacy and how to use AI without allowing it to replace their own thinking.
Teachers will also have to rethink assignments.
If an assignment can be completed by copying a question into an AI chatbot, perhaps the assignment needs to test something more than the ability to produce an answer.
Students should be asked to explain their reasoning, defend their opinions, work on projects and demonstrate what they actually understand.
The future belongs to students who can use AI—not students who depend on it
I don’t think AI is going away.
By the time my generation enters university and the workplace, AI will probably be even more powerful and much more integrated into everyday life.
That is why I don’t want my generation to grow up afraid of AI.
But I also don’t want us to become dependent on it.
The students who benefit most from AI may not be the ones who ask it to do everything for them. They may be the students who understand how to use it as a tool while still developing their own creativity, judgment, communication and problem-solving skills.
For me, that is the biggest question about AI in education.
Will AI help my generation become better thinkers—or will we stop thinking because AI is always there to do it for us?
I don’t think the answer has been decided yet.
But I think my generation should have a say in what that future looks like.