SAN ANTONIO — Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. It is being integrated into cars, smart phones and many other ways to make our lives easier, but there are also times people use AI for nefarious reasons.
One of the latest AI sites is called ChatGPT and districts across the country are banning it from their schools, citing its ability to do students' work for them.
Lori Jones, the Assistant Superintendent for Technology Services for the Northside Independent School District told us, "This is probably one of many that will probably be created and be made available out on the Internet. So I think this will be a common occurrence moving forward."
At the Northside ISD they're proactive with their Internet Safety Committee if a teacher finds a website to be harmful or poor as an instructional aid. Jones said, "We have a security team that evaluates and looks at the technical merits and instructionally what the website provides and if there's anything that's potentially harmful and they provide the recommendation to the committee and the committee makes either concurs or not concurs with that recommendation."
According to a Washington Post report the bot on ChatGPT can do everything from writing essays, to solving algebraic equations and it can even complete coding assignments which severely hampers the learning process.
Jones added, "Part of the reason you get a homework assignment is to make sure you're mastering the skills that are required for you to learn. And so if you're going around the system trying to cheat the system, then you're really probably not mastering the required skills for that particular learning objective."
Jones also has this advice for parents with so much technology now in the home. She said, "I would say parents should look at those things and see what is recommended in terms of how to monitor for those when they're at home. Certainly ask a teachers about that as well."
Jones also says in the NISD they teach students how to be a good digital citizen, and to open up a dialogue with your child to make sure they're going about learning the right way.