Artificial Intelligence

“It makes my job easier,” Judd Levy, a science teacher at Lahainaluna, said about using AI to assist his teaching work. “When I'm developing lessons, I can't think of everything, but the AI knows everything.” Even so, Levy objects to students using AI as a replacement for their own work and thinks that the problem is that “we haven't taught students how to use it ethically,” and that students more often are using AI as a “cheating tool.”

Coming across AI-created assignments is “frustrating,” he shared, “because I don't want to give an assignment and have to read what AI wrote, you know, from twenty different students.”

Jenifer Ariemma, an English teacher, repeats this frustration. “I stand firm with my students,” she says, telling them that “I would rather them write the worst paper that was ever written as long as it was theirs.”

The majority of students and staff at Lahainaluna are familiar with artificial intelligence. They all have some notion as to what they think it has done for us and for our future. Yet, many disagree on or are unsure about what that future looks like.

“There is a lot of uncertainty”

Vice Principal Christopher Webber thinks about AI a lot. He connects confusion over AI to the fact that “we are right at the beginning of what it might become.” “Because of this,” he continued, “there is a lot of uncertainty at school, not just our school but all schools, about how to utilize it, or if we should utilize it.” Levy says that the use of AI in schools is “a slippery slope, because the technology is changing so fast.”

Despite the lack of an official policy, Ariemma says that she and others in the English Department give students a chance to redo the assignment or take a zero on the assignment. She adds that “we have a gentleman from the DOE who comes every couple of weeks telling us how important AI is and how we should have all of our students using it.”

Webber claims that he isn’t sure about how AI is being used in school. “What they are using it for and how they are using it, I don't actually know. [...] It seems to be shrouded in this kind of secrecy.”

But students are using it. Freshman Amaziah Irrobis noted that other students “use it a lot to help with exams and answers, but they also use it a lot to cheat.”

An anonymous senior admitted that “I've used it before, mainly used it for like procrastination. I write down something fast and it writes something for me.”

Many teachers assume that this is the case. Ariemma offered an example: “Right now my classes, they’re doing an assignment that's due on Tuesday,” she said as she was interviewed just outside her classroom door. “I guarantee you if I walked in there, none of them will be doing it. They’ll wait, they’ll wait until Monday night and then they go 'uh oh,' so they run it through AI. I think it’s borderline laziness.”

Talaofa Sulunga, a junior, agrees, and thinks AI “is just a lazy way out for many people.”

The Artificial Intelligence Race

Webber has concerns that are bigger than the school. Specifically, he worries that AI is the future and that if students are not able to use it, the school is “leaving our students behind in terms of what their lives and their world’s gonna be.”

While he is concerned about whether our students will need AI, he of course sees that it might be affecting our “academic rigor.” He has seen an increasing number of AI plagiarism cases, the majority coming from English classes as well as “the school’s credit recovery program, EdGenuity, where students are using AI to plagiarize their essays.”

Aurora Webb, a senior at Lahainaluna, said, “I think it's awful. I think if you need to use AI to pass a class, then you should not be in that class.”

Freshman Irrobis (above) has a similar opinion: “AI could help us in many different ways, but it can also harm us.”

Webb mentioned that “I do think education around AI as a subject should be something people receive. We have already seen that without that sort of understanding, AI can be handled improperly.” She believes “that education should be about AI as a topic and not as a tool for other topics.”

Webb agrees that AI has potential, but currently doubts students can be trusted to use it responsibly. “I think it’s really useful and 100% has a place in today's society,” she said. “But it's being used the wrong way.”

“I think it would be great for analytical things,” she added. “It would be awesome if AI could do our taxes.” Given the dangers, however, Webb thinks “it should be completely banned,” or “out of the hands of the general public.”

Similarly, Freshman Edger Ortiz thinks that “AI can be used to study, not used for plagiarism. You shouldn’t get a grade for something you didn’t do.”

The best use for AI, Ortiz thinks, is as a tutor or a tool that will “simplify” complex ideas “to help students better understand.”

Mikayla Vergara, a junior, disagrees and thinks that AI “overcomplicates the questions that it is asked. In my experience in using AI, I’ve often had to tell it to simplify the given answer in order to understand what it is trying to say.”

There are other problems associated with AI. For instance, in the worst case, AI “could harm our education because sometimes it could use fake information which overall isn’t good.”

Ortiz refers to a phenomenon called hallucination or artificial hallucination in which a response generated by AI contains false or misleading information presented as fact.

Though many seem to share Webber’s concerns about AI’s role in the future, few know how we should be using it or doubt it is being used properly.

Ariemma thinks that “at this stage of the world, where we are right now, it’s really important that we start developing critical thinking skills.” She added, “Critical thinking and AI do not go together.”

Levy sees the issue differently. For him, knowing about AI is unavoidable and important. To be relevant, “Students need to know how to use it because it's going to be a part of everything they do in the future. It's gonna be everywhere.”

He paints a picture for the future with the past: “There was once a time where students had to do all their math calculations by hand,” he said. “When the calculator was first invented, it was really frowned upon in school, and students were told not to use a calculator. Now it’s an essential tool that students use in school, and I think AI will be the same way, as soon as we discover how to use it efficiently and ethically.”

Planning Ahead 

Webber is in the process of creating a new policy on AI that will be different from the DOE's current policy. “I will tell you I used AI to write the policy,” he said earnestly, “which is kinda where I am right now.”

Because of how new the issue is, Webber admitted to having a hard time finding examples. “Many DOE schools that I researched simply disallow the use of AI.” The thinking behind them, he assumes, is “that students are gonna plagiarize or use it irresponsibly.”

Webber said that his draft policy “seeks to be ethical” since “we want to make sure that people are not disenfranchised, that they have access to AI, but all the time keeping in mind the need to have ethical classroom experiences.”

Despite these concerns, there are still hardline clauses in Webber’s policy that say you can’t use it to “take the place of original students' thought and effort.”

Ariemma has other concerns. “I said in the meeting,” she said, referring to one of the meetings with the DOE gentleman (above), “that I want all of my students to write by hand, and the feedback in the meeting was that there will come a time when you won’t need to be writing anything, with your hand.”

“My heart sank,” she said. “I pray that that never happens. I really do. I don't ever want to lose handwriting because that’s so unique to each of us. I may be the last man standing with all this, but I'm gonna hold on to it as long as I can until I'm told otherwise.”