DE PERE (NBC 26) — Friday is the last day of school at West De Pere High School, marking the end of the second full school year when artificial intelligence assistants have been at the fingertips of America's high school students.
NBC 26 sat down with four teachers and three students to chat about the challenges and benefits of AI in the classroom.
See what the teachers and students had to say, in the full broadcast story:
"I think a majority of people use it," student Netra Kolli said.
"Yeah, at least half," student Jarek Kralovec adds.
"I think definitely it depends on which way they use it, but I think a majority of people use it," Kolli said.
Chat GPT, Google Gemini, even Snapchat AI — you name it, it's probably been used on a high school assignment.
"I know people who, like, will take pictures of their problems and be like, how do I solve this?" West De Pere High Junior Catherine Qiu says, referencing Snapchat.
Qiu says she's ethically opposed to using AI tools herself — and that its popularity concerns her.
"These are, like, my future doctors and my future lawyers and all these people, but like, they're going to be running the world," she said. "So if these people are using AI to get out of their schoolwork and skip all these important thinking moments, then like, what are we left with in the future?"
Teachers like Natalie Buhl and Alex Mattke are getting better about catching AI-generated work.
"You get a sense, when you work with high schoolers, of the way they write," said Buhl, an English teacher. "In particular students, the words they know, the words that wouldn't yet be maybe comfortable in their vocabulary."
But, it's a work in progress.
"There is software that's available to catch AI usage," said Mattke, a history teacher, "But sometimes that software, it might flag it as, maybe 20% AI — which means, 'This was human-written, parts could be AI-generated.' So, even when you try and track it, there's a lot of gray area."
At West De Pere, the administration has taken measures, like blocking Chat GPT on school Chromebooks, and using software to track writing in real time, to see if students copy large chunks of text. They also teach students about their digital footprints — all with the goal of staying ahead of AI, according to Ashley Knapp, the school's library media instructional technology specialist.
"Cheaters have always existed, right?" Knapp said. "This the same issue and the same conversation that happened with calculators [and] when the internet came out. This is just another new thing, but to be aware of it and to educate and to bring that to the attention of the kids, so that they know that the teachers are aware of it, and we're all trying to learn about it together, I think is a good conversation that's had here at West De Pere, often."
Some teachers, like math and computer science teacher Elizabeth Buboltz, even use AI themselves to help come up their own problems or prompts.
"I can still, like, check the answer and make sure it all works, but it helps me make problems that are more applicable to my students, rather than some of the old textbook problems," Buboltz said.
But, the tools have also led to some uncomfortable conversations
"If I had a student that turned in an essay that didn't sound anything like them, or created something that I never saw them creating in class, I'm going to have a conversation with that student, [and] be like, 'What happened here?'" Knapp said. "Where did this come from? And I think that's the point that we make with teachers a lot, is, you know your kids, you have to talk to them."
"There's definitely instances where students — it's not like they don't realize they've done something wrong, but they're simply trying to complete the assignment, and this is viewed as a tool that can help them to do that," Mattke said. "So just having that conversation can at least kind of bridge that divide and make them understand, 'You know, this is something that perhaps should be minimal, if at all, utilized, and here's why we're having this conversation about it.'"
And though some may try to game the system, the students have healthy attitudes.
"AI itself is not bad," Qiu said. "It's just like any other tool, but a lot of people use it in a way to replace their critical thinking skills. And I think that's where it becomes really dangerous and like, a slippery slope."
"It can be a good thing if people use it the right way, but there's so many ways that it can be used wrong, so I think that it should just, it should be used in moderation," Kolli, a junior, said.
"Yeah, because, I mean, like, with AI in school right now, if you use it to, like, do a whole assignment, for instance, you're only hurting yourself in the future, because you're not learning how to do the actual stuff," Kralovec, a senior, added.
These students know the consequences of using AI to write essays and pass it off as their own work.
"It's, '0%, call to the principal, and parents,' which — they repeat that, all essays, all year long," Kolli said.
"I feel like, AI right now, everyone's like, scared of it and worried about it, but it's going to become a tool within the next few years that just becomes part of your life," Kralovec said.
The teachers tell NBC 26 they don't envision a world where they need to switch to fully hand-written assignments only, but say in-class writing assignments could be more common.
