FARMINGTON — In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, one entity stands as a testament to the remarkable progress achieved in natural language processing: ChatGPT. Developed on the foundations of the groundbreaking GPT-3.5 architecture, ChatGPT emerges as an exemplar of how machines are gradually mastering the art of human-like conversation.

With its unparalleled ability to comprehend, contextualize, and respond coherently across a myriad of topics, ChatGPT reshapes our understanding of AI’s potential, offering a glimpse into a future where interaction with machines is as fluid as a conversation with a friend.

That opening paragraph was not written by the writer of this article, but ChatGPT itself. Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, or ChatGPT for short, is a language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI in November of last year, and since its launch, it has been making waves across all forms of industry.

One area in particular that is finding itself heavily affected by this newest form of AI is academia. As summer break comes to an end, kids across the state of Maine are returning to school, but many administrations are still trying to wrap their heads around the new application and how to write policy for it.

Regional School Unit 9 in Franklin County has had multiple discussions over the chatbot and the implication it may have on academic dishonesty. Just like how ChatGPT wrote the opening paragraph to this article, it could very well write an entire essay for a student in a matter of minutes.

Conversations around AI started in early June, when Director of Technology Kevin Bremner appeared before the board to share that he and his team would be spending the summer reviewing the technology and brainstorming ideas for policy.

“Unlike some things that slowly creep in, this just sort of exploded,” Bremner shared with the board in June. “It’s something that we’re going to have to start considering, like every school district, just how it’s going to affect education for students and how it’s going to impact work within the district as well.”

Bremner shared that he was excited to learn more about the application and help with the process of developing policy around it. “I’m also nervous about how it’s going to affect us,” he added.

Superintendent Christian Elkington brought the subject to the board after the subcommittees had extensive conversations about ChatGPT and other AI programs similar to it, such as Microsoft Bing, Perplexity AI, and Google Bard AI. In a phone interview with the Franklin Journal, Elkington shared that he believed outright banning the use of any AI was not the correct approach.

According to Elkington, his approach to ChatGPT and other similar AI programs is much more nuanced than simply viewing it as a means to cheat on an essay.

“This is not something you can avoid,” he shared with the Franklin Journal. “This is going to be the way of the future. Kids are going to need to learn it as they use it as they become young adults and adults. We’re not looking at banning it or not allowing it.”

Elkington shared an article with the board of directors on ways to navigate the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools in the classroom. In her article published at K-12 Dive, Contributor Elena Ferrarin suggested not blocking access, re-evaluating assignments, and even discussion of AI in the classroom.

In her article, Ferrarin cites Shana Ramin, a school technology integration specialist in Michigan, and states, “It’s helpful for teachers to know the types and styles of content produced by ChatGPT and other AI so they can fine-tune their own detection of potential plagiarism.”

She added, “As teaching policies, procedures and best practices evolve, it may be necessary to adjust student performance assessment metrics as related to the use of ChatGPT.” Using the internet as an example, at one point in time, it was considered dishonest in academia to use Google to search for an answer. Now, it is widely accepted.

According to Elkington, Maine School Management Association [MSMA] is currently drafting policies for Maine schools to use when dealing with ChatGPT and other AI programs. Elkington laments, however, that this will be something school administrations will be discussing for some time.

“It’s going to take more than just a few meetings and a few articles and a policy and so forth,” he shared. “We will need a group of people to get together on this and really dig into it.”

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