Beyond the Surface by Aaliyah Nina Louise

Beyond the Surface by Aaliyah Nina Louise - October 2026 Scholarship Essay

When I first started learning about artificial intelligence, I honestly thought it was mostly a bad thing. With everything happening in the world and everything I was seeing in the news about AI and its effects on our planet, I already had an opinion about it. So when my ENGL 102 professor brought AI into our class and wanted us to actually use it, I was confused. I kept wondering why we were studying it and why we were being encouraged to use something I thought was harmful.
Then I started researching it, and I realized that AI was not as simple as I thought. For about half of the semester, my class researched and wrote about AI from different perspectives. It felt like there was always a “this versus that.” One side showed how AI could cause problems, while the other showed how useful it could be. The more I researched, the harder it became to say that AI was simply good or bad.
One thing that stood out to me was how much AI could help students. It can make research faster and help students in ways I had not really thought about before. At the same time, I learned about problems like system bias and how quickly AI is developing. Those things reminded me why I was hesitant about it in the first place. Just because something is powerful does not mean it is automatically good.
My opinion about AI did not completely change after the class. I still have concerns about it, but I understand it differently now. I see it as a very powerful tool for students, but one that needs to be used carefully. Researching AI also changed the way I personally use it. Instead of just seeing it as something that gives you answers, I started seeing it as something that can help me get through research faster while still requiring me to think for myself.
I think the biggest thing I learned was that something small can lead to something much bigger. I started the semester questioning why we were even studying AI. By the end, I was questioning my own understanding of it. Sometimes learning is not about changing your opinion completely. Sometimes it is about understanding why there are different opinions in the first place.