TUSD has taken steps to limit use of artificial intelligence tool by students

The artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT was released in November 2022 and it didn’t take long for administrators at Tehachapi Unified School District to consider how the tool might be used — or abused — by students.

In a brief report to the district’s Board of Trustees on May 9, Superintendent Stacey Larson-Everson explained that the tool works by gathering data from the internet written by people and uses computing predictions to answer questions and queries input by the user.

“The replies it generates are prompted by textual requests and information from which the chatbot ‘learns’ more about different subjects and how to discuss them,” she said.

“The main feature of ChatGPT is generating responses like those humans would provide, in a text box,” she said. “Therefore, it is suitable for chatbots, AI system conversations and virtual assistants.

The text pulled from around the internet might also tempt students to copy-paste and substitute the computer application’s work for their own.

According to an article published on EducationWeek.com in late February, more and more teachers across the country have had to have “don’t let the robot do your homework” conversations with students.

Locally, the school district has taken steps to limit the use of ChatGPT on district devices, including blocking access to the tool.

And teachers at Jacobsen Middle School and Tehachapi High School also use an AI writing detection tool called Turnitin, which helps identify plagiarism, she said.