Artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent, but as a learning tool, it is a double-edged sword, says Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district.
At an education committee meeting Wednesday, Nov. 1, superintendent Scott Saywell talked about ChatGPT, a common AI tool he said is capable of understanding and generating human-like responses in text-based conversation.
Don Balcombe, assistant superintendent, said the technology can be advantageous, with almost endless educational applications.
“ChatGPT is a very good, focused search engine, so instead of just hitting Google or Bing, you can narrow your search and it’ll comb through things and come up with a very focused search for you,” he said. “[It’s] very good at generating reading passages and you can change them for a variety of grade levels, so you might want to have a reading passage about a narrative story with a wilderness scene and you can ask [it] to write the story.”
He said ChatGPT can be utilized to tailor the story for students of varying reading levels and can be used for practice materials.
“There’s an endless supply of prompts that you can put in … so if you’ve covered a topic and a teacher wants students to check their understanding, you can say, ‘Give me 45 examples of questions that would allow students to demonstrate their understanding on this topic’ and it’ll spit out 45,” Balcombe said.
The assistant superintendent added that information generated, however, isn’t always accurate, and privacy and security issues can arise.
“There’s nothing to stop a student or a teacher from putting in private information into ChatGPT, which may end up being shared with people they don’t want to share it with,” he said.
AI can also be used to cheat, and Balcombe said plagiarism can be difficult to determine.
“If I write in prompts into ChatGPT and narrow it down and redo three or four different prompts later and then hand that in as my own authentic work, it’s very difficult to use plagiarism software tools out there to be able to determine it because it truly is the only time that ChatGPT has generated that particular piece of writing,” he said.
Balcombe added it is important to communicate with staff and students about using generative AI and crediting it when used.
Trustee Tania Brzovic wondered if references to AI should be added to policies or if new policies should be drafted and Saywell said the situation is always changing.
“It’s kind of the ‘Wild West’ of AI right now and there are all manner of implications around policy and freedom of information and bias and all kinds of things,” said Saywell. “We need to talk more about that frankly.”
Greg Keller, board chairperson, said AI must be used properly.
“I think a lot of what was said is really important for us to remember, but I also think that’s really only scratching the surface,” he said. “I don’t think we will fully understand what this technology means until we get more experience with it.”
RELATED: Experts at VIEA summit discuss AI technology
READ ALSO: SD68 elementary schools getting wi-fi upgrades
karl.yu@nanaimobulletin.com
Follow Karl on Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news.
