Time for 'MaturitAi': 90% of students prepare with chatbots

This is perhaps the source of the temptation to use 'help' even during the examinations: a practice that, let us remember, is strictly forbidden and results in exclusion from the Maturità.

And yet, more than 1 in 3 school-leavers are already devising a possible strategy to do so: 23% are practically certain to consult the virtual assistant during the exam, while 12% see it as a last resort before the shipwreck, should their backs be against the wall.

A hypothesis, the latter, that is increasingly appealing to students, not least because many of them believe that those who should supervise do not always have the necessary tools to do so: more than 20% of students think that teachers would not be able to recognise a paper written by an AI, against only 32% who fear that the risk of being caught is very high. All the others are fairly uncertain and therefore think they can handle it.

But let us return to the licit and permissible uses, which are those acted upon by the vast majority: after all, it is the normal progression of the study method: once it was books and notes, then it was the Internet and online summaries, today Artificial Intelligence does the 'dirty' work.

Thus, we find that, in the pre-maturity revision, 42% of the candidates will definitely use some Artificial Intelligence services and 39% are likely to do so if necessary. Only 19% say they can do without it at this stage of the year.

More specifically, almost half (47%) use AIs to review the syllabus for the oral interview, with 33% using them mainly to generate content for the various steps of the question: from material to be included in the PCTO report, to examples of links between the various disciplines, so as not to be found unprepared once in front of the exam board.

14%, on the other hand, are interrogating generative AI chatbots to get as many examples as possible of topics and authors that might pop up in the first Italian test. While only 6% are making use of these tools in the preparation of the second test.

For Daniele Grassucci, director of Skuola.net, 'by now it is a fact: finding a high school student who has never used Ia is the exception rather than the rule'. In his opinion, 'what is certain is that from one year to the next the growth of the phenomenon is exponential, so it would be advisable to act quickly to train students and teachers on the conscious use of Ia'.