SINGAPORE: During last year’s exam season, a student showed me her answer to the 2024 GCE A-Level Chemistry Paper 3 question. The task was straightforward: Draw three curly arrows to complete a reaction mechanism.

ChatGPT provided a diagram with clean lines, proper notation, and technical precision. But the arrows were completely wrong, misplaced in ways that would cost full marks.

Here’s another example from the same year. Students were asked why calcium fluoride does not dissolve in water, even though the thermodynamic conditions suggest that it should.

ChatGPT explained that the particles are held together very tightly, which sounds reasonable at first glance. 

However, this missed the main point the examiners were looking for. The correct answer was that the reaction requires too much energy to get started.

THE THREAT TO STEM EDUCATION

Artificial intelligence in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education poses a unique challenge. Unlike essay plagiarism, students who use AI to solve STEM problem sets can evade detection. However, they skip the mental work that turns procedures into understanding.

I’ve been teaching A-Level Chemistry for over a decade, and I now see students across STEM subjects arriving with AI-generated answers they cannot evaluate. When students ask ChatGPT to explain concepts, whether chemical reactions, calculus problems or circuit diagrams, the answers often include too many details and reference material not in their syllabus. Students struggle to distinguish what’s relevant from what isn’t.

AI-generated STEM answers are dangerous because they look correct at first glance. They use proper terminology, follow conventional formatting and sound authoritative. What they lack is the specific insight the question demands.

In chemistry, when asked about thermodynamics, ChatGPT produces comprehensive explanations covering entropy, enthalpy and Gibbs free energy. In mathematics, ask about differentiation, and you’ll get the chain rule, product rule and quotient rule all explain...