by Saawan Duvvuri ’26
April 2024
Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022 by Artificial Intelligence research giant OpenAI, the presence of AI has become prevalent in many aspects of our lives. ChatGPT, which stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is a form of artificial intelligence designed to generate human-like text by predicting the next word in a sentence based on the words that come before it. Moreover, the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI language models has spawned other AI forms that are evoking groundbreaking impacts on our society, including AI voice generators, image and video producers, and more.
Although AI has many applicable uses to increase productivity, help with work, and produce more robust content for various jobs and projects, the use of AI introduces several concerns for academia, media, employment, and other facets of our lives. In the USN community, teachers and students alike are navigating how to use AI responsibly, especially AI language models like ChatGPT, to help students with their academic work in a manner that follows USN’s codes of academic integrity.
USN high school math teacher Andrew Hedman is optimistic about the future of AI. Hedman believes that AI will become more prevalent in the USN community as it becomes more available and widely used, and he compares the rise of ChatGPT to PhotoShop and the Internet, expressing that AI has many positive applications for students and teachers alike.
In a talk Hedman gave to USN faculty about the beneficial uses of AI on February 16, he showed teachers across high school how they could use ChatGPT to send emails, maintain their calendar, and create exams and worksheets for students. Hedman believes that students could use AI for similar purposes.
Jack Fruin ‘27 said that AI is already being used in his Photography and Digital Art and sees constructive potential academic applications.
“[AI] can be a useful in coding and writing classes with formatting outlines and feed-back,” he said.
Alexander Tesauro ‘27 agrees.
“AI can be used to help teach something that would be hard to understand,” Tesauro said.
Multiple students highlighted AI’s prowess with brainstorming and assistance for research purposes. While students are learning to integrate AI into their academic lives, USN faculty are working to determine when the usage of AI becomes academically dishonest, and under what contexts.
High School history teacher and 11th and 12th Grade Dean Matthew Haber reports that USN is currently working on their academic policies surrounding AI.
Whether AI becomes academically dishonest is based on “how [AI] is used, the teacher, and the assignment,” Haber said.
Haber also said that there is a wide range of faculty perspectives on AI in USN’s high school.
“[There are] some skeptical [teachers], some enthusiasts, and a lot in between,” Haber said.
Hedman supported Haber’s remarks on the academic integrity question and emphasized dialogue witht eachers.
“Students need to communicate with their teachers on an assignment by assignment basis to see if they should use AI,” Hedman said. “Even teachers that do allow ChatGPT on some assignments might not allow it on others.”
Haber says that AI can be a great assistive tool for students who are neurodiverse and need help comprehending certain literature, and he thinks that ChatGPT can be a great tool for helping any student in understanding complex writing.
However, Hedman and Haber also report concerns with the academic use of AI, and with AI’s potential impacts on society. Hedman believes that AI has “lowered the bar for access to says dishonesty,” with language models like ChatGPT making it easier than ever for students to plagiarize their writing.
“[USN]” does not want students to use AI in a way that undermines acquiring important skills,” he said.
While Hedman focused more on academics and work in his viewpoints of AI, Haber raised concerns about AI’s potential impacts on people’s perception of media and political information with the rise of AI image and video generators, particularly in regards to celebrities and prominent political figures.
Above, a conversation with ChatGPT for research purposes (via ChatGPT).
“People will not believe things anymore because so many things can be fake,” Haber said.
High school students also reported societal issues that might result from AI. Asher Hirt ‘25 predicts that many people might lose their jobs as a result of large companies replacing their workers with artificial intelligence. Others students raised concerns about the validity of AI generated videos, specifically harmful videos showing people committing crimes.
An AI-generated face. (via unrealperson.com)
While AI is becoming more prevalent in society, USN students and faculty are learning how to use AI to boost their productivity; however, there will continue to be discussions on the honesty of AI usage as USN further integrates artificial intelligence into its community.
AI is already having a broad impact on our perception of media, politics, and culture, and as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced and widely used, we will see how AI’s impacts on the world unfold.
