“Forget about the end of high school English,” Upper School History Teacher David Cutler said about The Atlantic’s viral article on ChatGPT by OpenAI, an online service that can transcribe student essays, among other writing-intensive tasks using Artificial Intelligence. “This could be the end of original thought entirely.”

Cutler said he quickly came to his senses. 

In a recent article written by Cutler published by Edutopia, Cutler said, “Teachers must navigate with students how to make effective and ethical use of this new technology. It’s way too early to know how to do this or what this entails, though one thing is for certain—if we do nothing but lament how AI spells doom for education, we lose a sacred chance to help guide students into a brave new world.”

Cutler addressed his eleventh-grade United States history class, explaining the capabilities of the novel technology. Students sat in awe as their teacher discussed AI.

Meanwhile, other teachers here were also grappling with what the new technology means for the future of education.

Humanities and Language Teachers React 

Humanities Department Co-Chair Donald Reese said he finds ChatGPT to be an ethical issue.

“You are asking this artificial intelligence to do something unethical for you. You are forcing artificial intelligence to go along with your plan,” Reese said.

Reese also expressed concern about students losing writing skills when using AI. “If people just answer the question in ChatGPT, they are cheating themselves of the possibility of being better at all of these skills that will be more and more crucial going forward,” Reese said.

Reese teaches his classes in a unique gradeless style. Reese said he sees why ChatGPT can be an incentive in his class but recognizes how the application would fail at the tasks. “At the moment, the free one it’s not going to fulfill the requirements [of class projects] because it never quotes,” Reese said.

“That’s why my class is organized the way it is. Because I want people to engage in the task.” Dean of Students Paul Murray also mentioned the deficiencies of ChatGPT.

“Having read about [Chat]GPT, it ain’t flawless. It is clumsy,” Murray said.

Murray said he is not concerned about the impending intelligence at small schools. 

“The fact that we know students so well and how they write, something like ChatGPT at a small school isn’t going to be effective,” Murray said. 

Furthermore, Murray explained that most students do not intend to violate academic integrity. 

“95 percent of the time, it’s got nothing to do with a kid actively defrauding a teacher. Oftentimes, it is a mistake,” Murray said.

Upper School Spanish Teacher Mirna Goldberger said she is more troubled about the potential effects of AI in classrooms. Goldberger explained that she has to combat Google Translate and other websites that can translate a word in seconds.

“I even have a hard time getting the message in class about using the translator; it is simply not of your own language production,” Goldberger said in an email to The Gator.

Goldberger said that students cannot replicate the same learning experience when translating their work.

“Students don’t understand that the production of language requires processing ideas into logos and messages that require linguistic structures, and the act of translating an essay is using technology to misrepresent your very own linguistic abilities and processing,” Goldberger said.

Moreover, Goldberger noted that she can tell whether a student translated or relied on outside help for an assignment. 

“As a master second language teacher, I am experienced enough to know exactly at proficiency level, and when kids use these technologies, I can tell.”

Upper School English Teacher Kenley Smith said she thinks that AI is an interesting tool that  “… it’s a new technology that offers us a lot of opportunities…”

However, Smith explained that she might be further inclined to offer in-class assessments. “But it means we have to change the way we assess writing, certainly more in-class and less at home,” Smith said.

Science Teachers React

Upper School Science Teacher Zoë Stublarec observed the research and mathematical inadequacies in AI resources.

“One of the issues that we already try to combat in the science department is teaching students how to do good research,” Stublarec said.

Stublarec expressed concern that with the ease of technology, students will not fact-check chatbots. 

“For any technology, there is room for error, and my fear is that students aren’t mature enough to take the extra step and dive deeper,” Stublarec said.

Stublarec started to explore the service with Jared Smith, another Upper School Science teacher. 

“We put in a question to see what it would come out with. Being somebody who has knowledge on a certain subject, you can pick out when there are issues,” Stublarec said.

Unfortunately, the results were not up to par, according to Stublarec: “We were looking at it, like ‘That one is not right.’”

Despite the imperfections of ChatGPT and other technologies, Upper School Physics Teacher Chris Hardman reports that he is “intrigued” by artificial intelligence.