A few months ago, people around the world stood in both awe and panic as OpenAI released a public research project called ChatGPT. Within five days the project had hit one million users — a feat that took Facebook 10 months, and Netflix 3.5 years to achieve. Using ChatGPT feels a lot like Google, but much more personal — you’re no longer querying a database for answers, you’re asking a friend. It’s even conversational. As AI continues to develop at a seemingly exponential rate, the possibilities appear vast and the questions endless.

ChatGPT has not gone without controversy, however. It has raised a wide array of questions — from students cheating in schools to risks of increased government propaganda. With all these concerns, it’s almost natural to be hesitant in embracing ChatGPT. Before diving into these issues, let’s explore why our world desperately needs more AI and not less.

Looking back at the past two years, it’s clear that the pandemic has severely affected not only the public health system but also many other aspects of public life. Among these is education, which saw over 147 million students around the world missing more than half of their in-person schooling. Of these, 24 million students are at risk of never returning to school. Even prior to the pandemic, 17 percent of children were not in school to begin with. The story gets grimmer when we examine the situation more closely. At the rate that education systems are progressing in developing countries, it is estimated that it will take 100 years for these schools reach the current education levels of students in what are considered developed countries. Statistics as these indicate that the world is currently failing to provide education to children around the world.

Zooming out a bit, the past year has painted a dark picture for the future of our planet as the climate crisis continues to worsen. The world watches as disaster after disaster hits, indiscriminate to national borders, from deadly heat waves throughout Europe, to record-breaking snowfall in the US disabling emergency vehicles and even the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan as devastating floods displaced millions. On the subject of climate, current CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella talked about how the world is attempting to compress 250 years of future chemistry research into only 25 years of time, and that exponential growth of AI may be the only feasible way to do that. This is essential if we are to develop the technology required to mitigate an impending climate crisis in 2050.

In the case of both global education and climate, it’s clear that the current approach is inadequate. AI is not going to simply make these issues go away, but I argue that it will be a key factor in working towards a solution. In the case of education, AI isn’t going to replace schools or teachers anytime soon. However, an AI math tutor that teaches you in your native language, both in school and at home can significantly alleviate hurdles by eliminating the need for qualified teachers in every village across the globe. A good example here is that of Brazil’s Amazonas state. It asked high school graduates to facilitate classrooms, which then received live-streams of lectures from a professor in a central classroom, allowing one trained teacher to reach thousands of students at once.

In the same way, students who graduate from future AI-driven programs could be rehired by the school system to interact personally with the students and deliver a pre-made and AI-assisted curriculum. This type of academic flexibility can also significantly help states that face a “brain drain”, where qualified teachers may be even harder to find. Rapid developments in chemistry to provide the energy storage and production that we need to deal with the climate crisis will also greatly depend on AI, similar to how Pfizer used AI in the development of the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine.

One of the largest issues brought up regarding ChatGPT has been surrounding academic integrity, as it appears to be the first AI chatbot advanced enough to produce a college-level essay. This is not the first time technology has come into conflict with teaching, however. 40 years ago, the 1980s saw a lively discussion regarding whether calculators should be allowed in schools. Arguments were made that calculators would decrease the intelligence of students. On the contrary, it was found they did not hinder any academic development, and instead changed the way math was thought about. Advanced arithmetic math, like multiplying and dividing large numbers, became less important for students to practice. Instead, discrete mathematics, data analysis, parametric representations, and nonlinear mathematics moved to the center stage, creating room for further mathematical advancements.

Today, calculators have become an essential part of not only the academic curriculum but also of our everyday life. A civil engineer who graduates from university without knowing how to use a calculator will certainly have a hard time finding a job. Similarly, Computer Science students who graduate from university in five years will need to know how to leverage AI to write software. In fact, the director of Artificial Intelligence and Autopilot at Tesla, Andrej Karpathy, wrote recently that AI already writes around 80 percent of his code. Hackers will be using AI to find bugs and weaknesses in software, and if the software engineers are not using AI to find and fix these shortcomings, they will be at an obvious disadvantage.

Calculators became commonplace at home, forcing teachers to shift away from heavy arithmetics and towards higher levels of math — the story will likely be similar for ChatGPT. Summaries may become obsolete and students will be forced to provide deeper, more critical analyses on what they read. Some students might use ChatGPT to put their ideas into words, and teachers will have to focus on grading more advanced writing techniques like essay organization and the framing of ideas.

That being said, academic integrity has been increasingly leaning on student integrity in the past years. Sites like Sparknotes are constantly used to cheat on book reports, and desperate students are already able to go online and pay someone as low as 20 AED to write their essay for them. ChatGPT simply makes such information more accessible and less gated to wealthy students, forcing teaching professionals to address the growing issue head-on and rethink what students should be learning and focusing on.

ChatGPT has undoubtedly raised serious questions about our education system and academia at large. Like all technology, it can both be used ethically and unethically, but I believe as teachers adapt, it will raise the academic standard in schools and push students to think more critically. Moreover, AI will be invaluable as our world continues to tackle existential and impending problems, such as the climate and education crisis.