Hinsdale D86 Creating AI Policy For Students

DARIEN, IL – Like its counterparts elsewhere, Hinsdale High School District 86 is creating policies to deal with the quick expansion of artificial intelligence.

Late last year, ChatGPT was launched. It is artificial intelligence that can provide human-like responses and compile information in presentable ways.

Such applications can give students opportunities to plagiarize in their assignments. This is the type of academic dishonesty that officials want to prevent.

Under a proposed District 86 policy, unless otherwise directed, students who use artificial intelligence for their work and represent it as their own are cheating and in violation of school rules.

The policy applies to artificial intelligence-based chatbots, assistants, translators and augmented optical character recognition systems.

The school board is set to vote on the new policy at its Aug. 24 meeting.

"We want to make sure all of our student discipline is in line with the updated legal code," Jason Markey, assistant superintendent for academics, said at last week's board meeting.

Artificial intelligence, he said, will change a lot throughout the next school year.

"We all have seen how much it has grown in the last six to eight months," he said.

He said teachers need to be explicit about when students can use artificial intelligence for their assignments. One application that is becoming infused with artificial intelligence is Grammarly, he said.

The popular application makes suggestions on grammar and ways to improve writing.