When The Ohio State University announced its push for all undergraduates to become fluent in AI, it raised some eyebrows.

Many posts on social media immediately bemoaned that OSU was simply rolling over to the expectation that students are going to use AI to supplement work in class. And that happens.

And will continue to happen. No doubt that colleges will spend a lot of time and resources defining the guidelines by which AI should be used and the keeping strict boundaries of academic integrity strong.

But what do we have in place here in NC’s public schools?

Having taught all levels high school English for nearly 30 years, the advent of AI has been a bit of a nightmare. Like finding traces of microplastics in almost all things consumed by the body, AI has infiltrated student work crossing the lines of plagiarism by allowing algorithms to write out of class papers.

Most public schools do not have the resources to consistently detect AI in original student papers when AI is used to write parts or all of the assignment. There are free AI checkers, but then there are plenty of programs that are targeted to students in high school and college that guarantee that what gets generated cannot be detected by those checkers.

NCDPI must do a better job clarifying its stance on AI, deliberately defining what constitutes academic infringements when AI is used, and passing those expectations on to students and parents effectively. So far all we really have is this:

And I had to look it up.

Go ahead and ask any high school English teacher who routinely assigns out of class essays if the battle against allowing an algorithm to write responses is real or not.

It is. And when students use AI as a crutch for getting assignments completed it only hurts them in the long run. Studies are already showing the rise of “cognitive debt” in students.

It appears North Carolina will not have a new state budget for the coming school year. Many districts are having to make cuts in existing budget items, and classes will surely not be getting smaller in size. We must have stringent and consistent guidelines on the use of AI or we will be hurting ourselves in so many ways.