AI Use Rant
Hello,
This is a throwaway acc lol.
So, I recently participated in a competition my uni hosts for money. I've done this before and won, for context. The prompt can be really anything (the past ones being mental health resources and substance abuse disorder), and the expectations for the solution can be something like an idea with a mockup to a functioning prototype. If they expect a functioning prototype, they usually up the prize money and length of time to work on the project. The second competition I've done, they want to try things out and the forced students to use AI and include how we used it in our presentation. Funny thing is, our group struggled on this aspect, since we hand-drew the graphics and I learned how to code through Youtube and other online spaces. Part of the reason I believe we won in this competition is that our other competitors took AI-use and ran with it, using AI to do the coding, drawing, presentation, etc. So, for this current competition (I'll refer to it as loneliness competition since that was the prompt, to solve the loneliness), they made an effort to note that they aren't wanting AI use in the competition since "AI doesn't know your lived experiences." So, this competition had a kick-off day, where we had to "ideate." it was stupid since I had already come up with an idea, so my group sped-ran through the ideation steps and started working on our idea. The prize money for the loneliness competition was less than my past competition, so I wasn't going to re-learn how to code and develop a functioning app. Plus, they only wanted a prototype. So, my team developed an idea like Pokemon Go meets Stardew Valley meets Cat Cafe, where students have a map of our campus and can find other players to gain ingredients to make items in their cafe. Once they hit a ping and walk toward the other player, they have a series of questions which are based off of previously noted interests that they have to ask each other. Once they ask these questions, they can gain the ingredient and make the bakery item to sell. The money they make can be used to upgrade a cafe or used in in-person events our game would host to get plushies, etc. I used NO AI for this solution, the idea came from my head. I traced all the graphics (separate tangent on how I did almost all the work + I don't know how to draw so I traced over graphics and added features, changed color schemes, etc). My CS-major co-collaborator was trying to use Figma AI to develop the app, but instead I used regular Figma to make a demo prototype (that doesn't work but the prize money was less, so why would I actually code). Then, we designed our presentation on Canva, wrote our own script, and pitched. I honestly thought we won at least third place, all the other solutions not only used AI to write the script, make the presentation, but also develop their website. As you can assume, mostly CS-majors competed (I'm a chem major), and their entire solution was a website where some target demographic would meet like-minded people based on similar interests. My CS collaborator and I noted that it was the exact same UI/UX, so I am 99.99% sure they all plugged in a prompt into some website-developing AI and got similar outputs since their prompts were the exact same. Since there were so many people competing, they took a few days to run the numbers and whatnot. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners were released today and the results were so unsurprising. The first place winner was some similarity designed website to match menopause women who suffered loss to similar women who suffered that same loss previously to give guidance. Their website, of course not only powered by AI, also included an AI chatbot to help these poor poor women. The pitch and idea was of course done by graduate-student men. The second solution was a website that helped lonely people through volunteering, essentially a website that conglomerates local volunteering using, believe it or not, AI. Now, I do believe that third place had a good idea that clearly had no AI use. I'm simply in disbelief by these results. I'm not saying I deserve to win, but the precedent set by the first two winners heavily-using AI in their solution, pitch, and presentation is terrifying. Either the judges (40's-50s) have no discernment to AI's use in their solution or they simply don't care and are looking for a target-audience that will pull the most amount of heart-strings.
Just wanted to rant,
Bye and thank you