Recently, the Chinese company DeepSeek introduced its latest artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, DeepSeek R1. This chatbot has created competition with OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, as well as various other AI programs owned by American firms. Shortly after the release of DeepSeek R1, Chinese company Alibaba announced a new version of its own chatbot, Qwen 2.5. Both DeepSeek R1 and Qwen 2.5 perform the same functions as ChatGPT and other AI chatbots but at a lower cost. This development has led to a decline in the stock prices of many American tech companies as competition in the industry and trade tensions between the U.S. and China escalate. 

As AI programs continue to evolve, people are using AI more in their daily lives. A study conducted with Replika users, has revealed an emotional dependence on AI chatbots among users, indicating that prolonged usage can lead to diminished social skills. Although AI presents various potential risks, it can also offer benefits for people in certain circumstances. “I think it could be helpful for kids who have disabilities with communication and things like that. I think it could be a very helpful tool, but for anyone else, I think becoming reliant on it is going to diminish your own potential and your own ability,” said English teacher Rebecca Hauth-Schmid. 

Companies and governments have increasingly adopted the usage of AI, with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, developing an AI chatbot and using other machine-learning programs. In addition to DOGE’s actions, President Trump signed an executive order that eliminates AI safeguards, viewing the order as a means to increase AI productivity. This order removes basic guidelines for using AI, such as regular testing to ensure AI is following laws intended to protect civil liberties, making sure employees are accurately completing work and not wasting agencies’ resources. Additionally, Musk has fired federal workers and replaced them with AI, raising concerns about whether AI is able to assess and properly judge situations.  

On a smaller scale, AI usage at Mounds View High School has been exceedingly prevalent. Many educators have shown concern about its use in students’ homework. “Unfortunately, kids will, instead of writing their own material, put it into AI, and it’s usually a dead giveaway because it uses vocabulary that they don’t even know the definition of and it just automatically sounds like a higher level of writing,” said Hauth-Schmid. 

However, in other subject areas, such as science or math, some students have used AI to help them figure out how to solve problems or explain confusing steps. “I obviously don’t use [AI] to copy stuff down, but I feel like it’s really helpful to just break down math problems that you don’t know,” said senior Emily Luo. 

In addition, there is hope about integrating AI in schools’ to aid students and enhance their learning experience. “I’m researching what it would [look] like to have an AI pathway here at Mounds View High School. That would not necessarily introduce new courses, but teach the ethical and appropriate uses of AI for purposes of education and learning in a way that doesn’t put students in a position of having to be underhanded in their use of it,” said Rob Reetz, principal. For example, this would include using AI to create videos of scripts to see how it would look in real life or using it to make research for assignments more efficient.

In the future, AI may have different uses or abilities. “I like to compare it to when Google was first introduced, like how everyone said that students were just going to use Google to cheat on everything and that type of thing. But as it’s evolved, it’s just a searching tool, we learn how to use it,” said Computer Science teacher Christopher Hagel. “And I assume that that’s what’s going to happen with all these AIs right now is we’re just going to learn how to use it. We’ll be better prepared because right now it’s still new to a lot of us, and I think that people get better at prompting the ChatGPT and using it more as a tool, rather than a thing to do work.”