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IWOULD BE LYING if I suggested to you that I know how AI will impact the next five years of education here at Lakeside. All I know is that it is big, it is here right now, and we’re going to find out together. And like calculators, translators, reference books, tutors, and the whole internet, AI in the educational setting has the potential to be used in all sorts of wonderfully appropriate and shockingly inappropriate ways.

Many public school districts around the country (including Seattle’s) — mindful or fearful of those inappropriate uses — moved quickly to ban ChatGPT outright on student and school devices. At Lakeside, we’re taking a different approach. Our community is going to be spending time over the coming weeks and months trying to figure out exactly what the short-term and long-term implications of AI will be for us, and what policies, guidelines, and practices make sense for students and adults using AI at Lakeside. For now, we are encouraging all of our students to do the following:

+ Learn more about AI. Check out articles and commentaries in the national press. Get an OpenAI account and try out ChatGPT or some other free AI engines for themselves. (Some tools, such as OpenAI’s Dall•E 2 program, create computer-generated art and photography, which raise other exciting and disturbing possibilities.)

+ Remember that the school’s State- ment of Community Expectations is our compass star for how to live, learn, and work in our Lakeside community. I’m sure most of our students remember the sentence in the first section, “All community members are expected to do their own work, share original ideas, and behave with academic and professional integrity.” Just to make this crystal clear: Using any sort of AI engine to complete any Lakeside assignment or assessment is not in keeping with this expectation, unless students have received specific and explicit guidance from their teachers to the contrary.

+ Talk with their teachers about their expectations, guidelines, and limitations for using AI in their classes and school work. Is it OK to use sometimes? If so, when, and how?

+ Talk with their peers, teachers, parents or guardians, and administrators about how AI might provide fun, meaningful, and powerful ways to enhance or extend their learning.

+ Recognize AI as a learning tool. Just like calculators, there is nothing inherently “bad” about using AI. But as all of our students know from their time at Lakeside, they can use tools to help their learning, and they can also use them to take shortcuts that undermine their opportunities to learn and grow. We’ve asked them to think about cool ways to build upon the former and be very wary of the latter.

Just as students will be learning to find their way in this new landscape, the faculty also finds itself on the cusp of something strange and wonderful and terrifying. We, too, will be learning how the advent of these powerful new AI engines will change teaching and learning at Lakeside (and everything else in our lives). For starters, here are some ways I’m encouraging our teachers to begin that learning:

+ Read up on AI in the classroom, including articles by teachers, cultural critics, and thought leaders on innovation and education.

+ Experiment with what AI can do in the classroom. Create a new lesson plan, for instance, or a rubric for an assignment.

+ Consider how our human development teachers talk to students about sex, drugs, and alcohol. (Hint: it’s not shouting ,“AI is the work of Satan — and never use it or even think about it! Also, from now on we will be writing every assignment in-class on paper with a traditional wooden pencil manufactured before 1993.”) Instead, think about offering factual information about what AI can and can’t do. Invite students to ask questions and voice their ideas and concerns in a safe environment. Talk with them about their own learning goals, and how AI can support or undermine those goals. And remind students that you are there to support them when they struggle, and that no grade is worth jeopardizing their integrity.

+ Talk with your advisees about their experiences, questions, and concerns about AI. Talk with your colleagues, department heads, friends, families, administrators, and others about how AI could be used or misused at Lakeside.

+ Begin exploring tools that can help identify differences between original and computer-generated content, and how we’ll teach our students to find clarity, as informed citizens, in the increasingly muddy waters of sources and transparency and “information” and “misinformation.”

For now — even as experts are saying that the current iterations of AI and machine learning are merely scratching the surface of what the technology will be doing even in a short time — we are asking ourselves fundamental questions. What should we be thinking about and doing? What new policies or practices do we need? What training or professional development should we pursue? What are ideas for summer grants to put toward this subject? What are the dangers and pitfalls — and also the opportunities and possibilities — that AI might present? How can we use this powerful new tool to craft amazing new learning experiences for our students?

Hans de Grys is Lakeside’s academic dean. This article is adapted from letters he emailed to students and faculty members in January 2023.