As students wait to get their results on standardized testing, it was recently announced that New Jersey is having AI grade all essays on the NJGPA-A. This change is not only happening in New Jersey, but it spans across the country into 20 other states.

This announcement needs to be more widely discussed. AI is known to have biases, which could lead students to receive different results on their essays than what they could have with a human grader.

Admittedly, finding graders for the essays is difficult. It takes a long time and not a lot of people are willing to contribute. Without having to find and pay so many people, that money can be saved and put into different funds. Using these funds for schools could give teachers more money to buy school supplies or offer better food options in the cafeterias. 

Although these benefits would be nice, using AI, a technology that students are repeatedly told not to use, to grade a test that holds a high standard for students is hypocritical. Many schools do not allow students to use AI for their English assignments because it gives them what they want and keeps them from using their brains. Why is the state using the same technology to grade the same students’ tests?

AI is trained and programmed to give answers based on an algorithm, which for many systems is to make the person asking happy. This is why most answers given by  AI end with a question to help the person get a better output.

Now students can look up a rubric for state testing and put it into any AI and ask it to write a paper that will be sufficient enough to pass based off of that rubric. At Del Val, Director of Curriculum Tara Civitillo thought similarly about how this decision will affect students and teachers.

“I think most nervousness comes from, ‘this is the first go around,’” Civitillo said. 

Not only is this the first time New Jersey is implementing AI to grade state graduation exams, but Civitillo added that all we can do is put trust in the AI and hope for good results.

“I hopefully am right in trusting they are going to put enough eyes on it [the AI] to make sure that the system’s working,” Civitillo said.

Del Val students also shared their feelings about this announcement. Freshman Maryn English had issues with the logic of the state using AI.

“If the government is using AI now, then there is an issue,” English said. “Why am I getting an F on my paper for using AI if the government can use AI to grade my writing?”

Utilizing AI on tests where students are supposed to give their best work should not be graded by an algorithm. AI will not give the same score as someone who can feel the emotions in a student’s writing or give the most logical score when the algorithm cannot account for creativity.