Editor’s note: This is part of a regular series of articles written by Brunswick High School students interested in journalism. These students will be covering issues in their school and the local community, with guidance by a teacher and editor at The Times Record.

In the new school year, Brunswick High School is trying to understand the educational applications of artificial intelligence (AI) while keeping its use under control.

New rules from the Brunswick School Department, released over the summer, sought to clarify the district’s stance on AI.

“We want to make sure that we provide clarity about what you can and can’t use it for,” Principal Troy Henninger said.

The rules pertain strictly to generative artificial intelligence (GAI), technology that can produce original content (such as images, text, audio and other media) based on patterns and data that the technology has been trained on.

There are two areas of guidance for uses of AI in school covered by the new rules — one for teachers and one for students. For the teachers, educational possibilities are numerous. Kaitlyn Ostrov, who is teaching Earth and space science, said that if she finds an article that’s written above her students’ reading level, she can use AI to simplify the language and boil it down in a way students can better understand.

“If I have multilingual learners, I can translate it into their native language, which is really nice, because then they can also get the information, so I feel like it makes things more equitable,” Ostrov said. “And if I’m explaining something to students and the way I’m explaining just isn’t working, and they’re not understanding it, I can have AI help me explain it in a different way.”

The new rules require teachers to get permission from their supervisor before they use any new AI tools. Teachers must also acknowledge the limits of AI, verifying the facts and evaluating ethics before using the information in their teaching.

Henninger said he and the Brunswick High faculty are trying to ensure that the school uses the technology responsibly in the coming year. During professional development, a period where Henninger says teachers will have “a year to work with their colleagues and explore a topic of their choice,” one group of teachers will sign up to explore the area of AI and how to manage its use within the classroom. 

However, where AI proves useful to teachers, it can be both detrimental and valuable to students. In a recent opinion piece published in The Atlantic, New York City high schooler Ashanty Rosario bemoaned AI’s “demolition” of their education, citing rampant cheating among peers destroying critical skills, such as ability to function under pressure. High schoolers, Rosario said, are simply “leaning on AI to sidestep pressure or deadlines.” Because of this negative impact on students’ work completion, Brunswick School Department’s new rules are grounded in the position that AI cannot be used as a replacement of student learning. 

Henninger said the new rules will require student computers to block sites with GAI capability, such as ChatGPT. AI detectors are also in place on many teachers’ Google classrooms. Some English teachers use turnitin.com, which simultaneously evaluates assignments for plagiarism and AI content. Cameron Coffey, a new science teacher in Brunswick, said his students “are not allowed to use [AI] on school assignments unless I explicitly give them approval.”

Ana Wiley, a world studies teacher, said she’ll require her students redo their work “if somebody uses AI for work with language that they clearly don’t know themselves.”

While there are many potentially detrimental uses of the technology, many students are simply using it to try to increase their efficiency.

“I don’t use it for schoolwork, I usually use it for study guides, note sheets and developing research — a bunch of things that I can do on my own but I view as busywork, things that are just mindless and aren’t really benefiting my education,” said Ryan McPherson, a senior.

“It’s being used in all areas of science, technology and health care, and I think if we don’t teach students how to use it responsibly and ethically, then we’re doing them a disservice because we’re not preparing them for the world that they’re going to be entering when they leave high school,” Ostrov said. 

Jonathan Bisson is a student journalist at Brunswick High School.