With the rise and development of artificial intelligence (AI), teachers are now discussing how to handle the potential misuse of AI by students.

“We’ve had discussions about this, all of the English teachers, but it’s such new software that just came out last spring for free,” senior English teacher Amy Smith said. “And so we are having lots of discussions about what this looks like and what’s going to happen.” 

Because AI is so new, teachers are educating students on the consequences of misuse while finding ways to work around it.

Freshman English teacher Alycia Shuman said she has had to “blatantly say” that the use of AI to write an essay or complete an assignment is cheating and is considered a form of plagiarism. 

Some teachers have had to change how they do assignments to make sure students aren’t cheating.

“I think a lot of English teachers are talking about doing the essays in class by hand to avoid the use of AI because we want to make sure it’s really students’ work,” sophomore English teacher Jody Petrow said. 

With the increase in AI usage in writing, new AI detectors have been developed like Originality AI, GPTZero, and Copyleaks to detect if AI has been used.

According to Open AI, an AI research and deployment company, while there are tools that teachers can use to try to pick out an assignment completed by AI, none of them are fully able to detect the difference between an AI generated text versus written ones. 

AI hasn’t only been used by students to write essays or find answers. A few teachers have started to take advantage of AI development and use it in a productive way to help them teach or complete tasks. 

Social studies teacher Tara Patomson said that she has used different AI tools to make assignments and curriculum more fun and creative for her students. She also said that one tool she uses helps students to get “immediate feedback” on their work which saves time in her class.

AI can be used as a potential tool in a classroom when used productively. Cognii, Class Companion, and Thinkster Math are a few tools that are designed for tutoring students and for helping teachers with assignments and grading.

“I think it’s going to long-term affect students more than teachers, negatively. I think positively it can do a lot of work for teachers,” said chemistry teacher, Nicole Menard.

With the newness of AI, it’s a continuous process of devising ways to implement it productively into classrooms while not misusing it.

“Learning is a process and if you shortcut that process, you shortcut your learning and you shortcut your potential,” said Menard.