Generation Z, often referred to as Gen Z, is the demographic cohort following the Millennial generation, typically defined as individuals born between 1997 and 2012. As the first generation to grow up with the internet, social media, and advanced technology from an early age, Gen Z is distinct in its values, behaviors, and interactions with the world. This generation is poised to shape the future in profound ways, especially in terms of digital communication, social justice, and consumer trends.

 

 

To the 11 students in Goucher College associate professor Lana Oweidat’s Theories and Practices in Composing, Tutoring, and Teaching honors course, the opening lines of the essay on Gen Z—and the two pages that followed—were reasonably good. Asked to assess the essay, the students, all tutors-in-training for Goucher’s Writing Center, quickly noted some strengths: The essay presented facts and provided seemingly solid data to back up its assertions. But there were weaknesses, too. There was no thesis and the essay flowed poorly, for starters.

Worse, with a little digging, the students encountered a larger flaw: shoddy sourcing.

“It turns out there was a source, but it was not accurate,” says Oweidat, who is chair of the department of Professional and Creative Writing and director of Goucher’s Writing Center. Despite its problems, the essay earned Cs and Bs from the tutors-in-training. Not bad considering the writer was none other than ChatGPT, the popular generative artificial intelligence tool.

“I think [the students] were surprised that the essay was pretty good,” says Oweidat. “Even I was surprised at what it came up with in five or 10 seconds.”

The essay review was part of a November 2024 class that taught students about AI tools and talked through steps to take when tutors suspect a student has used AI in their work without disclosure. As peer tutors, “They should have that knowledge to be able to tell students what AI is capable of doing and also help students navigate the issue of using AI ethically,” says Oweidat.

Gaining such knowledge and skill is only part of the future tutors’ training, but it’s a vital one at a time when AI tools are easily accessible and poised to be woven into work and life in ways we can only imagine—and some we can’t.

Across the Baltimore region, educators are grappling with a future that is already here. Once a staple of science fiction, generative AI is now a real tool that needs to be understood, harnessed, and, yes, sometimes restricted or even banned.

The educators we spoke to were surprisingly sanguine about the possibilities of—even excited about what it could bring to the classroom—and generally favor a proactive approach that embraces AI. At the same time, they recognize that such tools come with risks and that the development of best practices remains a work in progress.

So what is Generative AI? It’s a transformative type of artificial intelligence capable of creating original content—from essays (everything from the History of Feminism to My Trip to the Grand Canyon) and computer code to modern art, classical music scores, podcasts, and more—and streamlining a variety of tasks. As generative AI tools continue to evolve and gain traction, educators are faced with the challenge of ensuring students have all the skills they will need in an AI enabled future, including how to use AI tools effectively, ethically, and responsibly without becoming overly reliant on them as a replacement for in-depth research, synthesizing information, and critical thinking.

While so-called “adaptive” artificial intelligence tools (those capable of learning and adapting to new information) have been used in education for years, generative AI tools are a more recent development—ChatGPT, for example, became widely available to the public in November 2022.

“Right now, we are still in a place where educators are learning about AI,” says Tara Nattrass, managing director of innovation strategy at ISTE+ASCD, a nonprofit that seeks to help educators in K-12 and higher education use technology to improve education. “They are thinking through opportunities and risks.”

In addition to beginning to develop AI usage guidelines and revisiting their honor codes, many schools are seeking to enhance their digital literacy efforts. Educators are also exploring the ways AI can help streamline their own work—by doing things like assisting with administrative tasks, creating lesson plans, crunching data, or even tailoring learning to a student’s specific needs, which can create a more equitable learning experience for all.

And herein lies the paradox of AI: It has the potential to be simultaneously one of the best and worst things to happen to modern education. It presents tantalizing opportunities to improve the academic experience, enhance efficiency, free up time for higher-order thinking, and open doors for the future success of students. But yes, it also can be a tool for sophisticated cheating and even unintentional misuse by users who don’t understand its limitations and risks.

“I FIND MYSELF USING CHATGPT EVERY DAY. IT’S EXTREMELY USEFUL IN SCHOOL.”

In Maryland schools, colleges, and universities, guidelines for the use of AI vary by district, institution, and even individual educator. Current practices can range from an outright ban on the use of generative AI by students, to allowing its use in specified ways, to a full-throated embrace of the technology. As Oweidat notes, not everyone is comfortable with incorporating AI into the classroom.

“People are still processing and trying to do what’s best for students, of course,” she says.  “But some faculty are still grappling with the complexity of this and they’re not there yet.”

Aware of this complexity, University of Maryland has been proactive. In November 2023, they assembled a President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence to explore the use of AI at the university. And in April 2024, they officially launched the Artificial Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland, “focusing on responsible and ethical AI technology.”

Students, meanwhile, are making use of AI tools in and out of school. In a Spring 2024 University of Maryland campus-wide survey, 41 percent of students said they have used generative AI for academic purposes—and usage has almost certainly grown since the survey was conducted. The top three reported uses were for generating ideas, improving content, and summarizing concepts. Students across institutions say they also use AI to help with everything from organizing their work, to writing code, to getting a quick synopsis of a long technical paper. They may use it to get answers to questions they feel silly asking in class or to punch up a paragraph they’ve written but aren’t happy with.

For Towson University sophomore Krishan Patel, AI tools have recently become an invaluable resource. Although he’d used them since high school, “Honestly, before this semester started, I did not [expect to use] AI as often as I do now,” he says. “I find myself using ChatGPT every day. It’s extremely useful in school.”

For his algebra class, Patel found that having an AI tool solve math problems and show its work helped him practice solving similar problems on his own. For a speech class, Patel was able to use AI to brainstorm ideas. In both cases, his professors allowed and even encouraged such use.

And while Patel found his professors have been largely clear on allowable use—all addressed AI on their syllabus, with most prohibiting its use—students using AI for schoolwork can sometimes find themselves faced with tricky ethical questions. Like, is it cheating to ask AI for ideas for a paper you’ve been assigned? Or to summarize a reading for you? What about taking AI-generated editing suggestions that border on rewriting? The answer, for now at least, often is “it depends.”

At Goucher, the honor code prohibits the unauthorized use of generative AI to write papers and essays or to complete other assignments and directs students to ask their instructor and check course policies to determine if AI tools are allowed at any stage of their work. When instructors allow AI use, the rule of thumb is that anything taken from AI and incorporated into texts must be cited, says Oweidat.

Still, “there’s a lot of gray area,” admits Oweidat. “That’s why it’s very hard to come up with, ‘and this is how we do it.’ It’s complicated, and it’s an evolving issue.”

Even for areas that aren’t gray—having AI write large chunks of an essay without disclosure or permission, for example—potential solutions pose problems of their own.

“AI detectors are unreliable and the implicit bias within them will often flag work of multilingual learners and other students as being AI-generated even when it is not,” says Nattrass. “And we are now faced with this environment of distrust sometimes in our schools with teachers asking, was this generated by AI [or] was it not?”

And it’s not just educators who worry about the use and misuse of AI. Students also worry—that their peers will use AI to gain an unfair advantage or that their own use of AI will get them into trouble. In the UMD survey on AI use, a majority of student respondents said they were worried about how to use generative AI while maintaining the university’s code of academic conduct.

In addition to worries about cheating or unethical use, AI presents other challenges. As Oweidat’s students discovered, large language models like ChatGPT sometimes “hallucinate,” or create inaccurate content. That means their output must be verified by the user, says Soheil Feizi, a University of Maryland associate professor of computer science and founder and CEO of RELAI, which provides tools aimed at improving AI reliability.

“One of the main issues we see [is that] when people use AI models, they trust them. And that can obviously have significant consequences,” says Feizi, who is currently on leave from University of Maryland but plans to return to the classroom in the fall.

Educators who use AI in their work also need to be wary of the limitations of some AI tools, which might create content that perpetuates stereotypes or relies on misinformation or disinformation, says Nattrass.

The use of AI in education gives rise to other concerns too: about privacy, equity (not all students may have access to the technology), and the worry that an overreliance on AI will erode students’ skills in crucial areas.

“WE’RE ALSO GOING TO HAVE TO GET THEM READY FOR THEIR FUTURE AND THEIR FUTURE IS GOING TO INCLUDE AI…”

At McDonogh, a private college-preparatory school for students from pre-K through 12th grade in Owings Mills, embracing AI is a logical extension of a long-standing pedagogical approach that seeks to develop subject mastery in students while also fostering the skills to think deeply, explore a range of perspectives, and collaborate.

“There are certain things when you’re talking about a school that value the liberal arts and sciences that’s fundamental, that [students] are always going to have,” says McDonogh Associate Head of School Kate Mueller. “But we’re also going to have to get them ready for their future and their future is going to include AI—and a lot of different technologies for that matter.”

In spring 2023, McDonogh 9th graders worked through a multi-session course with Inspirit AI, an online artificial intelligence education program developed and taught by Stanford and MIT alumni and graduate students. As 10th graders, the students are continuing their AI instruction this year. Programs like this and others seek to help students understand AI’s workings, potential uses and limitations, and ethical considerations.

Taking a proactive approach to technology use, allowing students to use AI in a structured environment, and talking through ethical decision-making creates an environment that should limit the potential negatives, says Aisha Bryant, McDonogh’s director of educational technology. As part of their AI education, students practice creating an AI prompt, evaluating the response, and considering the ethics of using the AI-created content before making a decision about how much or how little of the content to use.

“Sometimes students, with pressure or being up against a deadline, don’t make the right choices,” says Bryant. But exploration and discussion of ethical choices helps them develop as responsible users of technology.

“By the end, they’re not even thinking, ‘Okay, write my essay for me,’” she says. “AI just becomes more like an assistant, because we have shown them how many different ways they can use it and they truly understand how AI works.”

As exciting as the potential for AI is, Mueller points out it’s just one of many tools students may use, none of which replace human-centered learning. “We want good, well rounded citizens to graduate from McDonogh and to make sure they are building relationships and interacting with each other,” she says.

To that end, some educators are redesigning assignments to be more creative and open-ended and are leaning toward tasks like group projects, oral presentations, and interactive learning experiences. The bonus: It’s harder for students to outsource that kind of work to AI and such assignments help build the durable skills that will help them thrive in an AI-integrated future.

As they move toward that future, educators and institutions will need to take steps to ensure all students have equal access to AI tools, says University of Maryland’s Feizi.

“What worries me is that we will have some people that are quite good at using these AI tools—and even better, they can contribute to these tools—and they are the ones who will see the majority of the benefits and that will potentially increase the economic gap and other disparities.”

For Goucher’s Oweidat, the path forward holds more exercises like the essay evaluation her tutors-in-training tackled, plus continued exploration and discussion of AI with faculty and students.

“The more I use the tool,” says Oweidat, “the more I teach about it, learn about it, the more comfortable I become and the more excited I become about the possibilities, which are endless really.”

If you’ve had a crown, an implant, worn a night guard, or needed braces or dentures, chances are that you’ve had impressions done. In case you don’t remember, that’s when your dentist or hygienist fills a plastic—or decades ago, metal—form full of goopy stuff, puts it into your mouth, and then holds it there until it hardens.

There were times I had this done when I gagged and swore that I was going to choke to death on the goop. Then, when my dentist pulled it out, the pressure was so great, I thought all of my teeth were going to come out with it.

Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

While I’ve never feared going to the dentist, let’s just say I was never thrilled with knowing I’d need impressions. Luckily, for me and so many others who may need to get impressions, dental technology has advanced to the point where that goop, as well as many other procedures, is becoming a thing of the past.

So let’s take a look at some of the latest advancements.

Goop Be Gone

Not only did the impression material—heretofore described as “goop”—cause issues for patients, Dr. Anthony Hamod, DDS, partner of Bel Air Dental Care in Fallston, says that it sometimes wasn’t as accurate as what’s being used now.

“When you take a mold that way, the hard tissue is going to be captured accurately in the impression materials, but as it hardens, it pushes the gums out of the way. So when we create a static hard model of what we think is in your mouth, the gums may not be as accurate,” Hamod says.

Today, Cone-Beam Computed Tomography, better known as CBCT, has changed all that. CBCT is a medical imaging technique. With it, dentists are able to take thousands of images of the patient’s teeth, mouth, gums and more—which appear immediately on the screen for the dentist to see. In Hamod’s practice, the machine they use takes up little room and has a small carbon footprint as well.

These scanners not only show 3D images of patients’ teeth and gums, but colors show up to indicate bite pressures—where the patients bite down harder on a particular tooth or teeth. Seeing this, dentists can check those specific teeth in the future, as they are more inclined to get loose or need root canals.

Deanna Birch, an assistant as well as a patient at Bel Air Dental Care, has had the goop impressions in the past and, more recently, has had the digital scanning.

She says that she prefers the scanning method, as they’re finished quickly. And are, well, less yucky.

“The scan is more accurate too,” says Birch, of Joppa. “Patients love it. Because when they would come in needing impressions, they would stress out about it. Some have the gag reflex, and that’s not fun. This is much better for them.”

Bone Collectors

CBCT technology is also being used for more involved dental surgical procedures. Dr. Sanju Jose, DDS, MDS, partner in the Columbia Center for Implants & Periodontics, uses the CBCT for implants (artificial structures that replace missing teeth), but additionally for creating bone grafts.

For example, if a patient who needs implants doesn’t have enough bone to hold them, dentists such as Jose can do procedures to actually regenerate it.

This normally involves mixing biologic activators with processed cadaver bone. An example of how this can be applied is when titanium mesh is formed over the patient’s existing bone, which will hold the bone in place and not allow the soft tissue to sink inwards.

Jose says that although titanium mesh has been around for some time, in the past dentists would have to trim it chairside, which could leave sharp edges.

“If one of the parts of the mesh was sharp, the gum tissue would start to open up. In studies, it would show that in almost 40 percent of cases, the titanium mesh pieces were sharp, the gums can open back up, and you don’t get the bone regeneration you were expecting,” Jose explains.

With CBCT, he can print a 3D model of the patient’s jaw, then put the titanium mesh over it and use wax to mimic the bone graft he wants. “Then I actually cut pieces of mesh to fit, because what you want is the mesh to adapt to the surrounding bone. I smooth out the sharp edges, sterilize it, and it drops right in during surgery.”

He also uses CBCT to get a 3D look at what the patient’s mouth actually looks like. “It shows you the full volume of the patient’s bone anatomy. You’re not guessing. I don’t want to go into surgery and think, ‘This is how much bone I think I have,’” says Jose. “With the 3D image, I get to see the sinuses, mark the nerves, and see all the anatomy.”

The software allows you to plan what diameter and depth the implant should be. This is especially important if a patient needs to have multiple implants and eliminates any guesswork.

“Let’s say you’re missing four front teeth. Now we can digitally create what those four front teeth should look like to match the adjacent teeth, taking into consideration aesthetics and function,” says Jose. “All of this—from the bone anatomy to the implants—can be preplanned. The lab will imprint a guide that’s custom to that patient. It makes the surgery faster, and everything goes into the mouth exactly where it should.”

When Jose does a full-mouth reconstruction, he now uses a facial scanner as well as CBCT and an intraoral scanner. Within a few minutes, he can capture the patient’s face and lip movements. This enables him to see their jaws moving, their gums, and their bone—the entire face.

“I can now design everything and see it digitally before we do the surgery,” he says.

3D Printing

The use of 3D printing is revolutionizing dentistry as it has so many other fields. While 3D printing has been used in the dental industry since about 2008, says Hamod, it was originally only used to print crowns.

“And of lot of dentists still do that if the logistics of their offices allow for it. A 3D printer prints your crowns while the patients are in the chair,” he says. The dentist then will glaze and stain the crown and then put it in before the patient leaves. The whole process takes approximately 1.5 hours for a single unit crown.

The same-day crowns, made famous by a company called Cerec, have the advantage of saving the patient multiple visits and a three-week turnover time. Not to mention they spare the patient having to deal with the risk of fracturing or losing the temporary crown. The downside is that the dentist’s office has to have an extra operatory (room with dental equipment) available to keep the patient waiting while the crown is manufactured. They are also not as durable/cosmetic as a laboratory-fabricated crown.

Hamod says that even dentures are 3D printed by labs today. Beginning in about 2020, dentures were just starting to be 3D printed by a few labs, but today, every major dental laboratory is able to print 3D dentures.

Dental offices also use 3D printing to make surgical guides, like those used for implants which are essentially 3D maps that fit in a patient’s mouth. Hamod explains that the guides direct the dentists as to where the implants must go.

“They click onto a patient’s teeth and allow us to place in the implant exactly where it belongs with the correct depth, angulation, and rotation,” explains Hamod. This takes all the guesswork out of the implant procedure. “In the past, [surgical guides] were called ‘wish guides’ because we would try our best to guestimate where it should go based off of where the tooth should go—but not necessarily where the bone was.”

What makes these 3D printed guides work so well is the fact that dentists use them in conjunction with CBCT. They are more accurate than traditional X-rays and provide dentists with more information. In this way, they can see the bone that will house the implant and place everything exactly where it needs to be.

They, Robots

Robotics has become another useful tool for modern dentistry. Before you freak out, no, a robot is not doing your surgery—the dentist is. Jose, whose practice was the first in Maryland to have robotics, explains that robotics aren’t always needed. In most cases, the surgical guide is sufficient.

“It’s great; it’s quick, and it’s accurate,” he says. “But it is surgery. And sometimes you have to deviate.” The problem is that the surgical guide won’t allow for any changes; what you see is where it goes. But with robotics, if Jose realizes that he needs to make a change, he types it into the computer program, and then the Yomi robotic system—the only one currently approved by the FDA—is able to help him complete the surgery using the new diagnostics.

The robotic system doesn’t look like a human. Imagine a white cart on wheels. On the top of it are two computer monitors as well as a laptop— these help the dentist conduct the surgery while seeing what they’re doing in real time. A robotic arm comes out of the main machine, and it will guide the dentist’s drill.

If Jose makes a change, as described above, when he uses the drill, which is attached to the robotic handpiece that fits into the arm, the robotic system will move it to make sure he is drilling in the exact right position in the patient’s mouth. It won’t allow him to deviate—unless he specifically changes the diagnostics in the computer.

“It allows me to deviate the plan in a positive manner—meaning no errors. Because the robotics movements are live,” says Jose.

The Future is AI

When you mention AI being used in dentistry, people tend to stress out because they believe this means eventually dentists will be replaced by machinery.

According to Dr. Jeffery Price, DDS, MS, MADG, FICD, FACD, and Dr. Ahmed S. Sultan, BDS, PhD, co-directors of the Division of Artificial Intelligence Research at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry (UMSOD)—the first AI division in the first dental school in the world—you don’t have to worry.

“In fact, the American Dental Association prefers the term ‘augmented intelligence,’ as it means a human and a machine are working together,” explains Price, also a clinical professor and director of the Division of Oral Radiology at UMSOD. “Artificial intelligence would be the human turning over all decision-making to the machine. Augmented intelligence plus the clinician will result in a better outcome for the patient.”

Sultan says what he foresees happening in the dental world is AI-powered assistants that have ambient note capabilities. “So whenever the clinician is talking to the patient, it takes that data and populates it in a clinical note. That’s really helpful because it allows dentists to sit down and talk to their patients and not waste time writing up the Electronic Health Record [EHR].”

It will be much like the system that your primary care physician may use. “And 90 percent of the time, you can actually have a connection with your doctor,” says Sultan, an assistant professor and program director for the Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology Residency Program at UMSOD.

Price adds that these assistants can put the information gathered into searchable fields so that, after a certain amount of time, “You’ve got data that’s reliable, and algorithms can search it and provide information for research purposes.”

Eventually, this could help day-to-day dental care as well, like when dentists spot something that may be oral cancer. “With AI, if they have a question about a lesion in someone’s mouth, they can take an intraoral picture of it, and with the growing advent and presence of AI, they will get an answer in 30 seconds or less,” says Price. The dentist can then decide the best course of treatment action. Sultan adds, “AI is really good at the flagging system. So, it can flag the dentist on things that are really subtle.”

As technology continues to advance in dentistry, it’s not just to make life easier for dentists.

“Ultimately, it’s all about the patient,” says Jose. “You want to be able to deliver the best care to the patient.”

If that best care means less goop and more 3D imagery, count me in.