Artificially Intelligent? Who Benefits From the Use of Gen AI in High School Education?

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) has already significantly impacted the education sector. The concern of who benefits more from this technology is becoming increasingly salient. A key concern lies in how students will utilize the technology within classroom settings and how it will benefit them. Against this backdrop, we used an experiment to seek the answer to how the motivation to use gen AI would impact the score. Our experiment shows that those who received the information treatment scored 3 points higher, reflecting a 20% relative increase compared to the control group. Furthermore, subsample analyses revealed that students with lower interest in the subject matter and those with less reported grades in past tests benefited from the treatment. The implications of the findings from this research and the direction of future research on the effective use of gen AIs in the classrooms are discussed.