On the first day of school, every serious teacher gives students the “AI talk.” As in every single school year gone by, they reiterate that any use of AI is strictly regarded as an infringement on academic integrity, and any writing run through an AI checker that comes out with even the slightest trace of “AI-like” language translates to a zero in the gradebook. Even seeing a student’s laptop open to a ChatGPT browser tab might arouse suspicion about their work ethic.
Granted, the unmotivated “writers” who copy-and-paste their essays from ChatGPT deserve what’s coming for them. But is it fair to subject hardworking students with fully original ideas to the same AI detection tools when they frequently misidentify structured or non-native English speakers’ writing as AI-generated? According to EyeSift 2026 benchmarks and Stanford HAI false positive research, GPTZero bears a 13% false-positive rate; Turnitin, up to 50% with ESL writers. Moreover, AI restrictions also limit educational resources for underprivileged groups—students who lack the funding for tutors that rely on AI to ask for detailed explanations, access study tools, or generate practice problems.
AI-concerned individuals should instead shift their attention to the corporations responsible for the technology in the first place. Skeptics already know the dangers that lie in allowing AI to control cloud computing infrastructure and data centers that millions of businesses and governments depend on. Now, picture that far-reaching power, concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants. With monopolies on artificial intelligence, major providers become political entities, precariously entrusted with the ability to feed public opinion, censor information, or survey the private lives of the general public. Such concentrated control urgently demands regulatory intervention to curb the dominance of large-scale companies and allow smaller bodies to enter the market as competitors, effectively reducing risk by eliminating single points of failure.
From an immediate standpoint, the dangers of AI lie in its exponentially increasing efficiency, replacing a human workforce with rapid automation. McKinsey Global Institute projects the activities accounting for nearly 30% of current working hours in the US could be automated by 2030. A decreased demand for labor means wages decrease—and sure, the cost of goods would also go down with higher productivity, but only if the corporations controlling the automated workforce choose not to utilize its market power to charge higher prices for commodities.
Will governments and parents stand by as history repeats itself? What truly calls for regulation—students concerned with building their futures, or corporations with massive potential sociopolitical and economic influence? In the 1950s, schools banned ballpoint pens because they feared the erosion of students’ penmanship due to the ease of ink flow. Until the 1990s, it was calculators—just like AI, once akin to “cheating,” now serving as a shortcut from routine calculations to higher-order thinking. If society is meant to inevitably progress in coexistence with AI, students must learn to integrate it to keep up with job competition, rather than fear its convenience for intellectual decline. Examining historical examples for unregulated private institutions, however, points to a grimmer conclusion. As juniors in APUSH learn, the New York Herald, a Democratic newspaper from the Civil War era, utilized its influence to shape public opinion on slavery and governance. PG&E, the electricity and gas supplier for millions of Californians, illustrates how infrastructure-controlling corporations accumulate political influence. KCRA reported in 2025 that the utility provider “tripled its political donations in the last three election cycles since it caused the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in state history in 2018,” raising suspicions about whether they hid excess expenses in customers’ bills.
Artificial intelligence was developed to enhance human capabilities, and now legislators and voters—in other words, all US citizens—hold the responsibility of preventing it from becoming a danger to society. Protect students’ futures by teaching responsible AI use rather than prohibiting it, while redirecting regulatory policies to the corporations with the power to deploy and exploit the technology for private gain. Artificial intelligence is an innovation for a new era, so let it set a precedent for society doing “new” right: using technology for the benefit of the people, while curbing the dangers of the consolidation of power.