The robot wrote my homework and that's OK, right? Bucks County schools lack AI policies

Who did Mark Schneider’s grandson’s homework?

When the boy was assigned an essay for class, Schneider — an official at the U.S. Department of Education —suggested his grandson run that essay through an artificial intelligence program. Schneider suggested his grandson have the artificial intelligence program re-write the essay, and it was about 10 percent better, Schneider said.

“But what is the ethics of this?” he asked. “We didn’t ask the artificial intelligence to do the work. We asked the program to fix his work. And, it is, in fact, better,” he said.

On Nov. 30, a San Francisco-based company named OpenAI released an artificial intelligence program that would produce written content using simple requests, and this immediately led to concerns about cheating in education. In Bucks County and Montgomery County, many schools lack official policies that reference the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom or graded assignments. And, some experts say, these artificial intelligence programs will grow exponentially smarter year after year.

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For example, users can ask ChatGPT to produce an essay on George Washington at the skill level of a third grader and receive new content within 30 seconds.

Or, you can ask the artificial intelligence program to write an essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. at the level of a Ph.D. student and receive content in under one minute.

Some have used ChatGPT and other programs to produce new audio, images, and videos of deceased persons, including recordings of Queen's Freddie Mercury performing Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and other songs.

This news organization contacted the Central Bucks, Neshaminy and Hatboro-Horsham school districts with a Right to Know request for internal communications about AI programs. We wanted to know if teachers and administrators were discussing such technologies. Each of the three districts said it would need at least 30 days to respond to those document requests.

All school districts post on their website copies of official board policies related to education. None appeared to have policies containing the words “artificial intelligence,” “AI,” “chatbot” or “ChatGPT.”

In April, the Quakertown Community School District signed a $7,595 agreement with the research service Proquest for library studies. Under the terms of the agreement, Quakertown educators and students can't use Proquest with to "develop or train any artificial intelligence..."

And none of this is a surprise to experts in the emerging technology. By the time a school principal learns about a new artificial intelligence program, six other new programs may be available to students. (Some, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are now available as free smartphone apps.)

Dr. James Hendler has spent decades focused on the promise of artificial intelligence as a researcher at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in central New York and as former chief scientist at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) based out of the Pentagon.

In some ways, Hendler sees the latest AI tools as comparable to the calculator or the roll-out of Wikipedia pages. Initially, some teachers resisted the use of calculators in math classes and others banned students from using Wikipedia.

“Over time, we learned how to use these tools as a start of a process to learning,” said Hendler, who encourages students to use artificial intelligence to complete coursework in his own courses. He also believes other teachers need to incorporate AI programs into lesson plans and graded assignments.

“Artificial intelligence is a tool, and it’s about how we apply that tool,” he said. “I have a lot of colleagues who have been teaching things the same way for 20 years. That needs to change,” he said.

Schneider, the director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, believes the recent launch of AI programs might someday be compared to the invention of electricity and the printing press.

“On Nov. 30, the world changed,” he said of the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT. “We’re only beginning to discover what this technology can be.

“We should be thinking of these tools as helpers — not replacements," he said. "We should be working to ensure our students can enhance skills with these tools," he continued.

“And, what’s the responsibility of schools and parents in this new world?" Schneider asked. "That’s the big question.”

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Can students use ChatGPT and AI? Most schools have no policy