AI in schools: asking for homework is absurd

BarcelonaI remember perfectly when, during recess four years ago, a colleague showed us artificial intelligence on his phone. Apparently, he'd heard about it on the radio and, out of curiosity, had tried it out. In front of us, he asked it to compare Modernism and Noucentisme and even to generate a poem in the style of Maragall. Before we'd even finished our coffee, a long and exhaustive piece of work, just as he'd asked, started appearing on the phone screen. The poem too. It was like something out of a magic trick. What was the catch? Who was writing all this? We immediately saw that the tool was fantastic, but also dangerous for the world of education.

Another colleague exclaimed that this would put us out of work, and at the time we thought it was an exaggeration, but not impossible. Besides, we quickly realized there were a lot of errors and inconsistencies. It was that same year that high school research projects succumbed to the temptation of using the infamous ChatGPT. Copying had always been common, but now a machine was generating it almost instantly. Too tempting for any student, even the good ones. That same year, I failed seven students who wrote an absurd amount of nonsense on an exam about the argument of Throwing the WhiteWhen I spoke to them, they explained that instead of reading the novel, the AI ​​had given them a summary... which they studied, yes, but they failed to detect serious errors. They simply trusted it blindly.

Homework

Since then, assigning homework has become somewhat absurd. Most secondary school students get it done by the AI (Academic Intelligence). Many get it over with quickly and don't even try to hide it; others add their own personal touch, although since they haven't learned practically anything from what they're copying, they don't even notice the mistakes. We have a new student who did some homework with the AI, and the teacher knew he had copied it because it was in... Italian! She thought what he was copying was written in Catalan. It's all nonsense, yes.

During the pandemic, I had to conduct online exams and monitor students' writing in real time to prevent them from copying entire paragraphs from websites. Confined to our homes, we couldn't do it any other way. For now, the most sensible approach is to have them work live, in front of the teacher. And let it be known that AI has very interesting applications and needs to be used in a positive and pedagogical way. In other words, homework needs to be assigned differently, and this is already forcing us to change the way we work.

The Department of Education has finally decided to ban mobile phones in secondary schools, but school administrations have been finding ways to manage the problem for many years. Now that AI has changed the rules of learning, it is also up to schools, for the time being, to explore regulations and prohibitions to figure out how to deal with a complex reality that always moves faster than bureaucracy and the law.