A Critical Discussion on Artificial Intelligence, Nissa's Segment

The speaker overheard their grade 8 English students talking about chat GPT and realized they needed to be as informed as their students about AI. They mention that AI tools like chat GPT can help organize thoughts and improve writing, but emphasize the importance of teaching students how to use these tools responsibly and not rely on them for completing assignments. They suggest offering authentic writing prompts that AI cannot produce. So I remember last spring overhearing a couple of my grade 8 English students talking. The conversation went something like this, so you got this chat GPT thing figured out? And then the reply, I think so. Now I had been hearing a lot about chat GPT myself and artificial intelligence, but I had definitely not figured it out. That conversation made me realize that if I was going to be any kind of a teacher, I was going to need to be at least as informed as my students about the tools that could be used. So what can teachers do to make sure that AI is used for the power of good? So the word coming down from my school division, from my bosses, on the topic of AI in general and chat GPT in particular, is that these are valuable tools that teachers and students should learn how to use. Chat GPT can help us organize our thoughts and choose better words to express our ideas, which can support us as writers to create better essays or other assignments, and could even be used to create better lesson plans. So I'm on board with that. However, we cannot be tolerant of plagiarism, and we all need to learn how to write. So it's important that we teach our students how to use the tools to support our learning, such as chat GPT, but not to simply complete our assignments. And we can do this by offering assignments with authentic writing prompts that are personal and more locally relevant, so as they cannot be produced by artificial intelligence.