I’ve taken a surprising amount of life advice from a man who got bitten by a radioactive spider. Of all the lessons Spider-Man gave me growing up (and trust me, my obsession never really ended), one has followed me everywhere: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Whenever I heard that quote growing up, whether it came from a teacher, coach, or even my older sister, I immediately locked in. Obviously, they weren’t the ones speaking anymore. Spider-Man was.
It probably also helped that I was terrified of spiders as a kid. Clearly, I wasn’t about to disrespect the guy who willingly dressed like one.
However, years later, I never expected that quote to become the way I thought about ChatGPT.
When my classmates and I first discovered ChatGPT in 2022 during my freshman year of high school, we treated it like a toy. We spent hours asking it the most random questions, reading its answers, and trying to see how far we could push it. We were convinced that, somehow, a group of high schoolers would be the ones to finally break the system.
Spoiler alert: We didn’t.
Somehow, a few of my classmates even started talking to artificial intelligence (AI) like they were in serious relationships. I still don’t know how we got there, and trust me, I don’t want to know.
Eventually, though, the questions stopped being so random. ChatGPT could summarize our English homework, explain history concepts, and solve math problems within seconds. Why spend 30 minutes stuck on a homework problem when AI could explain it almost instantly? Or, more dangerously, why solve it at all when AI could just give me the answer?
I remember one night in AP Calculus BC when I was staring at an integration-by-parts problem that I couldn’t figure out. I’d tried solving it myself, gotten frustrated, and eventually did what was quickly becoming the easiest solution to being confused: I put it into ChatGPT.
Within seconds, there it was. Finally, a solution to the problem that had been annoying me for what felt like forever.
There was only one problem: I had the answer, but I still didn’t understand it.
If someone had asked me to solve a similar problem without ChatGPT beside me, I probably would’ve ended up right back where I started. I realized there was a difference between getting an answer and actually learning how to find it.
Now, as a college student, that difference feels even more important.
I’ve realized how easy it is for “Can you help me understand this?” to slowly turn into “Can you just do this for me?”
College makes that temptation especially difficult to ignore. When assignments start piling up, exams are approaching and there never seem to be enough hours in the day, having something that can produce an answer almost instantly feels like a superpower.
Unfortunately, superpowers come with a certain responsibility. I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.
I’ve started paying more attention to how I ask AI for help. Instead of immediately asking for a solution, I might ask it to explain a concept differently. If I’m stuck on a problem, I can ask for a hint rather than the answer. If I’m brainstorming, I can use it to question my ideas instead of generating the entire idea for me.
I’ve also learned that struggle isn’t necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong. When an answer is one prompt away, spending 20 minutes confused can feel unnecessary, but sometimes those 20 minutes are where the actual learning happens. At the same time, struggling just for the sake of it doesn’t make much sense either. If AI can explain something in a way that finally makes it click, I’m going to use it.
For me, the question has become whether AI is removing an obstacle to my thinking or removing the need for me to think at all.
I still use AI when I’m stuck on a concept, when I need something explained in a completely different way or when I’ve been staring at an idea for so long that I need another perspective. I’m not interested in pretending the solution is to never open ChatGPT again.
Instead, I’ve started asking myself a few questions after I close the tab. Do I understand something I didn’t understand before? Could I explain it without AI by my side? Did it help me think, or did I ask it to do the thinking for me?
Spider-Man has been trying to tell me something since I was a kid: having power isn’t really the difficult part.
Deciding what to do with it is.